On Tue, 2006-05-23 at 09:53 +0800, Ed Greshko wrote: > Bob Goodwin wrote: > > > Ok, I read and reread the man page for hosts and hostname, etc. They > > put very little light on the subject of configuring /et/hosts beyond the > > ground rules that I am already familiar with. Removing the "box1" alias > > from the first line results in a very slow reboot of the system, it > > stalls on "sendmail" and "sm-client" for something on the order of a > > minute on each one, adding "box1" reduces the entire boot process to > > what seems like less than a minute on this old computer. > > Fine...but that is a different issue and is probably related to > configuration of sendmail and sm-client. > > > The man page says nothing about aliases, just shows a few in the example > > and it also seems to be saying that the host names must begin with a > > "letter." "They must begin with an *_alphabetic*_ character and > > end with an alphanumeric character." I suspect that's a typo and it > > should read begin and end with alphanumeric character? > > It shouldn't have to say anything about aliases. Aliases are simply > other names a system is known by. > > > 127.0.0.1 localhost localhost.localdomain box1 > > 10.1.1.2 box2 > > 10.1.1.3 box3 > > 10.1.1.4 box4 > > 10.1.1.1 box1 > > 192.168.1.226 box1 > > FWIW, the hosts file is used to determine the IP address of where you > want to go. The file is used in looking up in very simple linear > fashion. So, the last 2 lines are kind of meaningless since it is only > the first match that is used. Not entirely meaningless. Reverse lookups of 10.1.1.1 and 192.168.1.226 should return "box1" with these lines present, which they wouldn't do otherwise. > On "box1" type "ping box1" and you will always see that the loopback > address of 127.0.0.1 is always used. I'd drop the "box1" from that localhost line too. Paul.
