Hello,
I would like to reach out to the Debian and broader open-source community regarding a recurring and impactful issue that affects cloud environments globally. My name is Loic C. I worked as a Product Support Engineer in the UK for seven years, assisting clients with cloud configuration, and I continue to reside in the UK. The issue is that /etc/hosts files are frequently incorrectly formatted on cloud servers. This often leads to communication failures between systems, resulting in reliability issues, performance degradation, and unnecessary troubleshooting overhead. I propose that a standard be developed across major operating systems, including Debian, to validate /etc/hosts formatting and raise explicit errors when the structure is incorrect. This is important because: * The /etc/hosts file is evaluated before DNS, so formatting errors can fully break name resolution. * Differences between Linux distributions (e.g. Debian vs Red Hat) and other OS families increase the risk of misconfiguration. * Faulty configuration causes resource waste and increased energy consumption in cloud environments, which has sustainability implications. I have also contacted IEEE, Red Hat, and other OS communities to encourage a coordinated effort. To address this effectively, I believe a cross-industry working group or standards alignment discussion would be beneficial. This represents a relatively small improvement with meaningful benefits for operational reliability, energy efficiency, and sustainability in modern cloud computing. Thank you for your time and consideration. I would welcome feedback, collaboration, and direction on the appropriate next steps. Best regards, Loic C.
