Keith Keller wrote:
On Mon, Mar 07, 2011 at 10:34:24AM -0600, Sean Carolan wrote:
Can anyone point out reasons why it might be a bad idea to put this sort of line in your /etc/hosts file, eg, pointing the FQDN at the loopback address?
127.0.0.1 hostname.domain.com hostname localhost localhost.localdomain
Would the application work with a hosts entry like this?
127.0.0.1 hostname.dummy localhost localhost.localdomain
(Make sure you pick .dummy so as not to interfere with any other DNS.)
In theory you could leave off .dummy, but then you risk hostname being completed with the search domain in resolv.conf, which creates the problems already mentioned with putting hostname.domain.com in /etc/hosts. (I have not tested this at all!)
And giving it 127.0.0.1 would tell it others to ignore it, I think. Where did your user come up with this idea - clearly, they have *no* clue what they're doing, and need at least a brown bag lunch about TCP/IP, and they should not be allowed to dictate this. Their "idea" is a bug, and needs to be fixed.
mark