On Sunday 17 September 2006 15:19, Tim wrote: > On Sun, 2006-09-17 at 10:32 +0100, Anne Wilson wrote: > > Adding the local hostname seems to be a Fedora thing, and I see no > > good reason for it. > > Do you mean having a localhost name entry? No > I have to wonder about that, > localhost = 127.0.0.1 on just about everything. It could be presumed to > be present, whether or not it actually is. > > Do you mean adding the local host's name to the localhost line? I think > this a bad idea, even if the machine is not connected to any other > networkable device. It might be the case now, but two weeks later when > someone tries to SMB between two boxes, and wonders why Windows cannot > browse "\\localhost\myfiles"... > This is what I was referring to. I was surprised to find Fedora adding the local host name to the localhost line. It caused me problem (I do run samba) that totally disappeared when I split the line, keeping the localhost line pure. > Do you mean adding a line for the local host addresses to the hosts > file? If you have any service, including the X server, sendmail, etc., > that tries to start up using the machine's hostname, it has to be able > to know what IP and name are associated with each other. > My personal preference is for static IP, and I do have a longish hosts file, listing all boxes on the lan. Not necessary for many people, but I prefer to do it rather than wait to see what application might run into problems without it. I forgot to do that on the rawhide laptop, and postfix.sendmail did have problems with local mail. Fixing the hosts file cured it entirely. Anne
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