Jeff Vian wrote:
<snip>
Also, when doing an install with FC2, FC1, and earlier RedHat versions,
the hostname given during the install is (in my experience) usually also
placed on the 127.0.0.1 line of this file. I consider it a bug (but
only a minor annoyance) that the assigned hostname is not placed on its
own line with the assigned IP address, but in cases where there are
multiple NICs it is harder to get it right so the present method may be
best.
Thus, multiple FQDNs on a line with a single IP address are not wrong. They may be "not in good form" in your view but that is the way the
/etc/hosts file is usually used.
I consider it a bug, too, and one of the first things I change whenever Anaconda hands me the reins to my new machine. It does make a difference, too, in at least one area. For the sake of argument, let's say you have a hosts file that looks like this:
127.0.0.1 localhost localhost.localdomain fred fred.localdomain
When you ping fred, you get something like this:
[root@fred rj]# ping fred
PING localhost.localdomain (127.0.0.1) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from localhost.localdomain (127.0.0.1): icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=0.047 ms
If you leave the ping running and run ifconfig a couple of times, you can see that the counters for the loopback interface, lo, is incrementing.
Now if you clean up the hosts file: 127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost 192.168.1.8 fred.localdomain fred
...and again ping fred, you get different results:
[root@fred rj]# ping fred
PING fred.localdomain (192.168.1.8) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from fred.localdomain (192.168.1.8): icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=0.058 ms
64 bytes from fred.localdomain (192.168.1.8): icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.045 ms
This time, the ethX interface at 192.168.1.8 is being hit and the counters for the ethX interface are incrementing.
This is the result I expect when I ping myself.
Besides that, it's MY machine and that's how EYE want it to be! ;-)
(I also want this &%#@* ASUS m/b to go up in a puff of smoke but that's another matter altogether.)
-- You can fool some of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, and that is sufficient.
