/etc/hosts and system entries

[Alexander Boström]

fre 2007-09-28 klockan 05:47 -0400 skrev Jesse Keating:

> Almost every single location I take my laptop there is no dns entry for
> my hostname.  Relying upon every hostname to be DNS resolvable is
> extremely dated thinking.

If you want to run a Kerberos service, say a telnetd or an sshd, on your
laptop, then the laptop needs to agree with the rest of the world about
some subset of DNS.

A Kerberos service has a key stored on disk which is tied to its
hostname, that's why the hostname is important. A typical client has a
key tied to the username, so then DNS values for that client is less
critical.

Btw, PTR for your IP shouldn't really matter here, but it might, for
some odd reason. Having your name point by A/AAAA to your current IP is
useful though, if you want to be able to run a system service that
accepts and authenticates incoming connections. That's why it's
important for Windows AD laptop owners to be able to report their IP
back to their home DC, so that they can be found and contacted by some
central control thingy in the DC. I think. (That's also why the DC DNS
will be cluttered with lots of 192.168.x.x A records...)

But until someone explains what the problem really is, we shouldn't draw
any conclusions.

/abo