The dependency wasn't added so that gnome-control-center could resolve the hostname but so that everything else could resolve the hostname when gnome-control-center is used to change the hostname.
Anyway, the dependency is already dropped in our bzr branch. This issue just didn't seem critical enough to try to get through Final Freeze since it was only identified today. -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Desktop Packages, which is subscribed to gnome-control-center in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1766575 Title: Drop libnss-myhostname recommends Status in gnome-control-center package in Ubuntu: Fix Committed Status in gnome-control-center source package in Bionic: Fix Committed Bug description: gnome-control-center added a Recommends: libnss-myhostname years ago so that it was possible to easily change the hostname in the Details panel. That dependency no longer appears to be needed since we switched to systemd-resolved. Testing Done ============ In both Debian Testing and Ubuntu 18.04 (Debian doesn't use systemd-resolved so seemed useful to try there too). sudo apt uninstall libnss-myhostname Restart Open the GNOME Settings app (gnome-control-center) In the left sidebar, click Devices Enter a different Device name in the block Open a terminal and verify that the hostname has been changed. In Debian, running `ping new-hostname` fails, but it works fine in Ubuntu. Other Info ========== There are concerns about having libnss-myhostname in the default install. See comment 5 at LP: #1741277. See also LP: #1162475 Note that /etc/hosts isn't updated regardless of whether libnss-myhostname is installed (I guess my bug description there was wrong but there was some kind of bug there.) Regression Potential ==================== To quote from the manpage: https://manpages.debian.org/unstable/nss-resolve "Note that systemd-resolved will synthesize DNS resource records in a few cases, for example for "localhost" and the current hostname, see systemd-resolved(8) for the full list. This duplicates the functionality of nss-myhostname(8), but it is still recommended (see examples below) to keep nss-myhostname configured in /etc/nsswitch.conf, to keep those names resolveable if systemd- resolved is not running." Ubuntu uses systemd-resolved by default and it's expected that users who don't want to use that will need to configure some things manually. To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-control-center/+bug/1766575/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages Post to : desktop-packages@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
