Alex Winbow wrote:
> 
> On Fri, 3 Jul 1998, Eric Irrgang wrote:
> 
> > If your system stays up most of the time, your IP address will probably
> > never change anyway.
>         Curiously, no matter how much time my sytem was on or off, it
> always had the same IP, without exception.

That's because the IP leases by the UT RESNet are _outrageously_ long. 
I think they vary from 2 to 4 weeks.  So, unless they run out of IP
addresses for people setting up new computers, you could have your
system _off_ for as much as a month and still get the same IP address
next time you started DHCPCD

> 
> > It seems to me, though, that your hosts file would get modified by the
> > dhcp client on your system every time it starts up, though.  Just a
> > hunch...  Anyone have any feedback on this before I go experimenting?
> 
>         DHCPcd doesn't modify /etc/hosts. There's no need to; any request
> to resolve <myhost>.dorm.utexas.edu simply goes up the chain to the UT
> DNS. It seems like /etc/hosts is really an anachronism from the olden days
> of yore, when DNS wasn't nearly as universal.
> 

Once again, these comments are guesswork without having rebooted and
poking around in Linux... I can't visualize right now what /etc/hosts
looks like...

It seems to me, though, that there must be a file somewhere that tells
any given box what to call itself in broadcast vs. loopback
communication.  I would assume this would be /etc/hosts.  There has also
got to be a hierarchy.  When dhcpcd finds out that a the box should
refer to itself as resnet-xx-xx.dorm.utexas.edu, that's gotta be stored
somewhere.  Which means that every time dhcpcd gets this information,
it's gotta write it somewhere, and it only makes sense to make it an
easily found environment or system file that doesn't require other apps
to query dhcpcd directly.

Anyway, my point is that it makes sense for there to be a file that has
localhost, torus.dorm.utexas.edu, resnet-xx-xx.dorm.utexas.edu, etc. all
together that will get written or read whenever it one of the addresses
changes, a la dhcpcd.  Similarly the IPs like 127.0.0.1 vs.
129.116.xx.xx.

I guess the quick way to check would be to just look at the date stamp
on /etc/hosts, but perhaps you can clarify what really goes on?

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