Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2001 16:18:20 -0500 From: "Joe & Fhe Barbish" <barbish@a1poweruser.com> To: "FBSD Questions" <questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: /etc/hosts file ? FBSD doc suck Message-ID: <LPBBIGIAAKKEOEJOLEGOIEHCCJAA.barbish@a1poweruser.com>
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To all that commented on my first post about how bad
the man pages are. I do have a life other that FBSD
So I was not able to jump in sooner. I may not have a
Full understanding of the purpose of the hosts file
so I may be incorrect in some of the things I have
said below, but you will get a idea of what kind of
content it should provide as to supporting background
information I was talking about in my first post.
This is what I think the man page for hosts should say.
The customary normal purpose of the Hosts file is to provide
a convent place to post the IP address that have been assigned
to servers or LAN attached machines and equate them to
meaningfully names. It's far more convenient to remember a
name than a IP address when administrating the network.
FBSD user a naming convention based on domain name syntax of
Prefix.domain-name.com. Generally the domain-name.com is
intended to represent every thing at and behind this FBSD box.
Typically the domain-name used would be one you have registered
with a authorized register. But it can be any name you want
since this file is only seen by this FBSD box and those
connected behind it. A unique prefix can be used to identify each
machine and or service that requires an IP address to function.
The prefix name can be any name you choose to uniquely represent
that IP address.
This is just a convenance function for the users of the this
local network. This file serves no other purpose other that to
equate IP address to names for easy of identification. No entries
have to be here other than those that come with the install to
set the default of localhost.
The format of the configuration statements have 4 fields.
IP address=
The IP address you allocated to that service or machine.
If you have not been assigned a IP address range from your ISP,
then you must use one from the private IP address groups reserved
for just this purpose.
Host=
This is the prefix name you want to use to identify the
equipment at that IP address.
Alias1 =
This is the complete prefix.domain-name.com combination name you
want to use to represent this IP address.
Alias 2 = optional. Can be any name you want. Such as persons
first name who uses that machine, or lan01 to mean first machine
on the LAN.
10.0.5.1 Gateway gateway.company-name.com mainhost
10.0.5.2 firewall firewall.company-name.com security
10.0.8.1 nic1lan01 nic1lan01.company-name.com david
10.0.8.5 nic1lan02 nic1lan01.company-name.com accounting1
The following commands will all do the same thing.
Ping 10.0.5.1 or ping gateway or ping mainhost
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