[CentOS] /etc/hosts - hostname alias for 127.0.0.1

Mon Mar 7 16:59:36 UTC 2011
Alexander Arlt <centos at mailman.track5.de>

Am 03/07/2011 05:49 PM, schrieb Sean Carolan:
 >> First, if your host is actually communicating with any kind of ip-based
 >> network, it is quite certain, that 127.0.0.1 simply isn't his IP
 >> address. And, at least for me, that's a fairly good reason.
 >
 > Indeed.  It does seem like a bad idea to have a single host using
 > loopback, while the rest of the network refers to it by it's real IP
 > address.

Acknowledged. At least it will save you a lot of time next year, when 
you have forgotten about that and are wondering why every machine on the 
network can reach a service and only the host itself can't (or vice 
versa...).

 >> Second, sendmail had the habit of breaking if your hostname was mapped
 >> to 127.0.0.1, but I stopped using sendmail a decade ago, so I can't
 >> verify this. :)
 >
 > The reason this came up is because one of our end-users requested such
 > a setup in the /etc/hosts file, and I didn't think it was a good idea.
 > Seems it would be better to fix the application(s) that require the
 > data to use the real network IP address.

Most of the time it's a good idea to fix applications before ravishing 
your network setup to make it work. :)