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Date:      Wed, 07 May 1997 07:59:53 +0100
From:      Brian Somers <brian@awfulhak.org>
To:        "Kevin P. Neal" <kpneal@pobox.com>
Cc:        Mikael Karpberg <karpen@ocean.campus.luth.se>, freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: bind before hosts and iijppp... 
Message-ID:  <199705070659.HAA07655@awfulhak.demon.co.uk>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 06 May 1997 19:58:49 EDT." <1.5.4.32.19970506235849.00925a40@mindspring.com> 

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> At 08:58 AM 5/6/97 +0200, Mikael Karpberg wrote:
> >According to J Wunsch:
> >> As Marko Schuetz wrote:
> >> 
> >> > Maybe a better policy would be to have as few as possible entries in
> >> > /etc/hosts, but have /etc/host.conf default to hosts before bind.
> >> 
> >> bind before hosts is the default policy (also if there's no host.conf
> >> at all).  This has a long tradition, and it's basically ``The Right
> >> Thing'', since it just means the opinion of the network administrator
> >> (who administers the DNS) has more weight than that of the local
> >> system's administrator (who maintains /etc/hosts) when it comes to
> >> network maintenance.
> >
> >DNS can be slow/down/unreachable.  /etc/hosts is never. I think that's a win.
> >There should only be a few entries in etc hosts, anyway. And if anything is
> >wrong in that file, the admin is at fault.
> 
> It also seems kinda stupid to have to hit the wire to resolve "localhost"
> to it's ip.

This is a bit trickier.  You can have the reverse:

primary   0.0.127.IN-ADDR.ARPA  localhost.rev

where localhost.rev is the one generated by make-localhost, but we
need to have make-localhost generate the zone file too.  This then
conflicts with any local DNS config files - bearing in mind that
you need to have a zone file for "localhost.my.domain" rather than
just localhost.

Here, you begin to need to know what you're doing !  Not so easy to
give examples.

> --
> XCOMM Kevin P. Neal, Junior, Comp. Sci.     -   House of Retrocomputing
> XCOMM  mailto:kpneal@pobox.com              -   http://www.pobox.com/~kpn/
> XCOMM  kpneal@eos.ncsu.edu              Spoken by Keir Finlow-Bates:
> XCOMM "Good grief, I've just noticed I've typed in a rant. Sorry chaps!"
> 





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