From owner-freebsd-doc Thu Dec 6 15:29:38 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org Received: from lists.blarg.net (lists.blarg.net [206.124.128.17]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 138ED37B405; Thu, 6 Dec 2001 15:29:28 -0800 (PST) Received: from thig.blarg.net (thig.blarg.net [206.124.128.18]) by lists.blarg.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8DC2EBE1F; Thu, 6 Dec 2001 15:29:27 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost.localdomain ([206.124.139.115]) by thig.blarg.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id PAA19008; Thu, 6 Dec 2001 15:29:26 -0800 Received: (from jojo@localhost) by localhost.localdomain (8.11.6/8.11.3) id fB6NTCd18635; Thu, 6 Dec 2001 15:29:12 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from swear@blarg.net) To: Giorgos Keramidas Cc: doc@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: host.conf.5 manpage References: <20011206200746.GA2127@hades.hell.gr> From: swear@blarg.net (Gary W. Swearingen) Date: 06 Dec 2001 15:29:10 -0800 In-Reply-To: <20011206200746.GA2127@hades.hell.gr> Message-ID: <0wn10whqrd.10w@localhost.localdomain> Lines: 104 User-Agent: Gnus/5.0808 (Gnus v5.8.8) XEmacs/21.1 (Cuyahoga Valley) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: owner-freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Giorgos Keramidas writes: > What do you think of this? I'm especially in need of comments and > suggestions for the following things: > > . I've made a separate .It entry in the list of service names for > every available service name. Good decision. > Any mdoc experts' advice is more than welcome Not me. But on the text, here's a diff with some suggested changes. I got a bit carried away, so feel free to ignore some of my changes. P.S. For what it's worth (nothing?), my man page grepper found no references to "host.conf" in any man page on my 4.4-R system! --- host.conf.5.orig Thu Dec 6 14:08:12 2001 +++ host.conf.5 Thu Dec 6 15:11:03 2001 @@ -31,29 +31,24 @@ .Os FreeBSD .Sh NAME .Nm host.conf -.Nd format of resolver services configuration file +.Nd DNS resolver services configuration file .Sh SYNOPSIS .Pa /etc/host.conf .Sh DESCRIPTION The .Nm -file holds part of the configuration for the resolver of -.Fx . -This is the file that describes what services and in what order will -be used by the C library resolving routines (like +file holds part of the configuration for the resolver. It describes +which services (e.g., DNS or YP/NIS servers) the C library +resolving routines (like .Xr gethostbyname 3 ) -when a name or address lookup is done. +will use, and their order of use, when resolving. .Pp -The format of this file is human readable, and easy to modify with the -text editor of your choise. Lines that begin with a +Lines with .Ql # -are comments, and are ignored. The rest of the lines contain service -names. The service names can be either on separate lines, one in each -line, or grouped in lines that contain more than one service name. -When more than one service names are grouped in the same line, they -can be separated by whitespace, or by one of the -.Qq ,:; -characters. +in the first column +are ignored. The rest of the file may contain any number of +service names delimited by any number of colons, semicolons, +commas, tabs, spaces, and newlines. .Pp Valid service names are: .Bl -tag -width "yellowpages" @@ -61,9 +56,7 @@ An alias for .Ql hosts . .It bind -This service makes the resolver use Internet Domain System (DNS) for -resolving hostnames and addresses. The DNS resolver configuration is -described in +The resolver will use one or more DNS servers. See .Xr resolver 5 . .It dns An alias for @@ -72,10 +65,7 @@ An alias for .Ql bind . .It hosts -When this service name is used in -.Nm , -name and address lookups are done by using the local hosts database. -The local hosts database is described in +The resolver will use the local host database. See .Xr hosts 5 . .It hosttable An alias for @@ -84,10 +74,7 @@ An alias for .Ql hosts . .It nis -When service name is used in -.Nm , -the resolver uses YP/NIS for making lookups of hostnames and -addresses. The YP/NIS system is described in +The resolver will use one or more YP/NIS servers. See .Xr yp 4 . .It yellowpages An alias for @@ -99,7 +86,7 @@ .Sh FILES .Bl -tag -width "resolv.conf" .It Pa host.conf -The services configuration file resides in +The file resides in .Pa /etc . .El .Sh SEE ALSO To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-doc" in the body of the message