/etc/hosts and system entries

[Simo Sorce]

On Thu, 2007-09-27 at 09:59 -0400, Harry Hoffman wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> So, /etc/hosts comes setup by default (i.e. after kickstart install)
> 
> # Do not remove the following line, or various programs
> # that require network functionality will fail.
> 127.0.0.1               localhost.localdomain localhost
> 
> I'm fairly certain to not too long ago (redhat-9 perhaps) the hostname 
> of the system was also added to the localhost entry:
> 
> 127.0.0.1  my.host.com my localhost.localdomain localhost
> 
> 
> This had the distinct advantage that when apps (i.e. yum-updatesd) sent 
> mail from the system via a mail host then address would appear as:
> root at my.host.com  instead of root at localhost.com

But breaks miserably in other situations when you wanto to resolve the
ip address of your machine. A typical example is kerberos and winbindd
(also using kerberos).

> Am I remembering correctly, in terms of how I believe it used to be? If 
> so, anyone know why it changed?

Breaks stuff.

Simo.