On Mon, 2006-07-10 at 13:17 -0400, Dan McDonald wrote: > On Mon, Jul 10, 2006 at 09:42:09AM -0700, Darren Dunham wrote: > > Is there some reason that the standard network configuration routines put > > the local host IP address in both inet/hosts and inet/ipnodes? > > We never should've had separate files.
True. The way that this was originally designed, it was crucial that both the hosts and ipnodes files have duplicate IPv4 mappings, otherwise, the system could exhibit difficult-to-diagnose name resolution problems. This is why you see the system populating both files. Since the original implementation of this design in Solaris 8, it has become clear that requiring administrators to consistently keep these two files in sync. when entries are added or modified is problematic. > > I can see arguments for one or the other with v4 addresses, but having both > > doesn't seem as useful since only one is used by name lookups. At least if > > the address wasn't in the hosts file, admins wouldn't assume that it was > > valid and that changing the address would do something. > > It's a big mess. We never should've had two separate files for this. In > fact, it's now fixed in Nevada (bugid 6219146). Not yet fixed in Nevada, but that's the plan. Rishi Srivatsavai is working on the fix, and will have a code-review shortly. I believe his plan is to include [EMAIL PROTECTED] in his code-review, so everyone here should be notified. -Seb _______________________________________________ networking-discuss mailing list [email protected]
