Re: bug in hostname

[Paul Jarc]

Jim Meyering <address@hidden> wrote:
> Bruno Haible <address@hidden> wrote:
>>   - whether there is a semantic difference between the first hostname and
>>     the other ones ("aliases")?

A hostname program does not need to talk to the network at all.  The
kernel keeps exactly one hostname in memory, and the hostname program
gets/sets it via gethostname()/sethostname().  It's fine to also
provide access to any names found in DNS, but that isn't central.

When it comes to DNS, there can be multiple names, but there need not
be any "primary" name among them.  There can be, and often is, but
it's also possible that all may have equal standing.  If all you have
to start with is an IP address, though, then you're probably only
going to find one name from there anyway.

> If it's useful to provide the other names, then hostname should do
> that with a new (long-named) option.

Agree.

>>   - why some programs expect IP addresses with brackets and some don't?

Unless both kinds of programs invoke "hostname -i", we don't need to
care about that.


paul