And the consequences of that are…?
It's not just localhost but anything and everything in /etc/hosts that is not otherwise reflected by DNS.
And the consequences of that are? I run Bind to provide DNS for my 3 computer network. It's hardly an overhead, it also provides a caching name server for requests, and squid likewise does not use /etc/hosts.
Secondly, /etc/hosts is there specifically to provide a "static table
of host names".
/etc/hosts is ancient legacy left over from the time before DNS. Before DNS came about, everyone used a host file to map IP addresses to hostnames. DNS replaced that procedure several decades ago.
Is that so? DNS *replaced* that procedure? Explain, then, the presence
of an /etc/hosts file on *every* 'nix machine I have ever used, from
*BSD to every flavor of Linux, ever. "replaced"? Supplemented, yes.
Supplanted for non-local hosts, yes. But /etc/hosts has not been
replaced. Is there an /etc/hosts file on your machine? Nowhere does it
say in the courier docs that courier doesn't rely on the host machine's
name resolution capabilities.
]$ cat /etc/hosts ## # Host Database # # localhost is used to configure the loopback interface # when the system is booting. Do not change this entry. ## 127.0.0.1 localhost 255.255.255.255 broadcasthost ::1 localhost
Well, there's the reason for /etc/hosts - so the loopback interface can work before DNS comes up.
I honestly find it ridiculous that courier doesn't consider using /etc/hosts, assuming that all users of courier *must* have access to a nameserver.
Courier is a mail server targeted at people who send and receive mail, and as such expects them to have some sort of name server. My external IP has a DNS entry so I can actually use my mail server (and my internal hosts have dynamic entries from DHCP), and if you're managing a network large enough to have internal mail servers and still using /etc/hosts, I really pity you.
-- Phillip Hutchings [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.sitharus.com/
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