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Bug 101810

Summary: trn requires /etc/HOSTNAME, but this configuration file isn't setup
Product: [Retired] Red Hat Linux Reporter: borchers
Component: trnAssignee: Jeff Johnson <jbj>
Status: CLOSED WONTFIX QA Contact:
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: 9   
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Target Release: ---   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
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Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
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Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2003-08-19 16:32:03 UTC Type: ---
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Description borchers 2003-08-07 04:39:53 UTC
Description of problem:

Red Hat 9 contains trn-3.6-21 as an rpm package.  However, the install 
process leaves the system without an /etc/HOSTNAME file, and trn requires 
this file.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):


How reproducible:

Just try running trn!

Steps to Reproduce:
1. run trn
    
Actual results:

>trn
Warning: Couldn't open /etc/HOSTNAME to determine hostname!

Caught an internal error--.newsrc restored   
Expected results:

trn should run normally.  (Note that you'll need to set the NNTPSERVER
environment variable to the name of an available NNTP server.)  

Additional info:

The basic problem here is that trn doesn't use "gethostname", but 
rather looks in /etc/HOSTNAME.  

Setting up /etc/HOSTNAME would probably be generally helpful to other
packages which expect the file to be present.  

It would also be trivial to patch trn to use "gethostname"  However, I'm not 
sure whether anyone is actively maintaining this software any more.

Comment 1 Jeff Johnson 2003-08-19 16:32:03 UTC
Put a hostname in /etc/HOSTNAME to configure.

Trying to retrofit a more reasonable convention for
a program as old as trn is hardly worth the effort.
The issue is not as simple as just using gethostname,
as trn posts, and users often want their posts to appear
as originating from a domain, not from a host.