Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2001 12:16:10 -0500 From: "Joe & Fhe Barbish" <barbish@a1poweruser.com> To: "Anthony Atkielski" <anthony@freebie.atkielski.com> Cc: "FBSD Questions" <questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: RE: /etc/hosts file ? FBSD doc suck Message-ID: <LPBBIGIAAKKEOEJOLEGOKEEMCJAA.barbish@a1poweruser.com> In-Reply-To: <012e01c18278$cef45510$0a00000a@atkielski.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Anthony I want to thank you for your professional response to my question on this list. You were concise and to the point. To bad the other repliers who monitor this mailing list don't understand and/or comprehend the valuable service this mailing list plays in the acceptance of FBSD by mainstream users. I see posts that are obvious even to me that they have not researched their problem or not given enough info. But to respond to a question that is obviously will thought out with a stupid statement of 'read the man page' just shows the responder knows less that the questioner. As you know my question took a turn for the worst when people started jumping on other responder who just don't know how to use the English language to comprehend the meaning of the questions subject or how to have a professional manner in the correspondences they show to the world. I am not offended by people who show there fools and demonstrate they lack knowledge of the subject by what they write. That's what the delete key is for. My view point is if I can not add some new info to the question I just don't reply. Many other readers of this list should do the same thing. The type of information you provided is what is missing in the FBSD handbook. In the technical documentation writers world it's called descriptive supporting background information. The handbook and man pages are written in a reference style which is targeted at an audience who all ready has an in-depth understanding of how things work. Some of the man pages you all most have to have the authors level of knowledge to understand what it means. I have 25 years installing operating systems on large IBM mainframe machines. I have read more technical manuals they I care to remember. I have seen manuals that are easy to comprehend and some that are so bad they should have never been printed. I think I have the background to judge how well a technical manual supports a software product. So I make this statement as constructive criticism. FBSD will never penetrate the main line pc operating system market or ever make a dent in Microsoft's market share until the handbook, man pages and install procedure become user friendly, up to date and current with the version of the software in current distribution. These are all lacking in the newly published second edition of the FBSD handbook. I hope Wind River the new FBSD supporter will also see this and invest in a technical writer to redo the documentation. The software product may be the best in it's niche but with out good Documentation it will just not become popular. Is becoming popular not what we FBSD users want to see? Now a comment about what I have comprehended from your answer. It looks to me as the host name function in the hosts file is an undocumented standard naming convention. The domain name represents the handle name you want to know your whole environment by. The prefix.domain is the name you use to identify each unique machine on the LAN. The alias name is just a short cut name. The names are easier to remember that the IP address. Entries of this type are not necessary but are generally used as a convenance. So if I have these statements 10.0.0.10 gateway.companyname.com gateway 10.0.0.11 winbox1.companyname.com winbox1 I could ping 10.0.0.10 or ping gateway.companyname.com or ping gateway and all the pings would be basically the same. Thanks again for a job well done Joe -----Original Message----- From: Anthony Atkielski [mailto:anthony@freebie.atkielski.com] Sent: Tuesday, December 11, 2001 2:20 PM To: Joe & Fhe Barbish Cc: FreeBSD Questions Subject: Re: /etc/hosts file ? Joe writes: > I think the ::1 and 127.0.0.1 work together > and have to do with loopback function ... The first is for IPv6, which you probably aren't using. The second is for standard IPv4 IP addressing. As you correctly surmise, they are for the loopback (localhost) address. > ... but I have no idea what the 'localhost > localhost.my.domain myname.my.domain' is > saying to FBSD and or if am I suppose to change it. These are the names equated with the local machine. You should leave the "localhost" text alone, but change the rest to reflect the domain in which your machine resides. Since you are on a small LAN with just your two machines, however, you can just put "localhost" on this line. > Now the handbook says to add entries for any > local hosts, but gives no explanation of what > a local host is. In your configuration, a local host is the FreeBSD machine itself, plus other machines on the same LAN, which means your Win98 box. So only these two machines are local hosts. > Is local host any private box attached to > this FBSD box or just FBSD boxes with server > functions? Local hosts are any machines on your LAN that you wish to be able to address by name. So if you call your Win98 box "winbox" and you've given it an address of 10.0.0.2, you'd need a line like this in /etc/hosts to address it by name: 10.0.0.2 winbox > So do I need a statement in hosts for 10.0.0.1? It doesn't hurt, but it is not essential, unless you wish to reference that address by name. The /etc/hosts file is just a list of names to be associated with IP addresses. The resolver functions search this file looking for a name you give when you reference a computer by its hostname (either the name itself or the fully-qualified domain name, such as winbox.joesdomain.com, or whatever). > Does official hostname mean a domain name > registered with the internet people, or is > it any name I want to use as a handle to > reference this FBSD box? You can use any name you want. The /etc/hosts file is used only by the FreeBSD box itself, so you have complete freedom to put in the names you want. If the computers referenced also have "official" names known to the outside world, of course, you might wish to make sure that your hosts file matches those, but it isn't required. The hosts file will take precedence. > Does it have to have end with a .com? No, it can be whatever you want. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?LPBBIGIAAKKEOEJOLEGOKEEMCJAA.barbish>