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After installation, /etc/hosts contains something like this: 127.0.0.1 [hostname] localhost.localdomain localdomain Generally on Unix, this should be 127.0.0.1 [hostname] localhost - no localhost.localdomain. Otherwise, the reverse resolution might not work for some applications. However, maybe there are ways around this in the C library, don't know ...
Not having the full localhost.localdomain hostname causes problems with sendmail.
Accepted, but please change the sequence, so that "localhost" comes _before_ "localhost.localdomain", otherwise 127.0.0.1 always gets resolved to the annoying "localhost.localdomain" instead of just "localhost" as one expects. I assume sendmail needs to FORWARD resolve localhost.localdomain to 127.0.0.1, right? Reopening and changing version to 7.0 as this problem persists in 7.0, too.
Apologies for the unresponsiveness of the previous package maintainer... The first hostname after the IP is always used for IP -> name resolution. The position of localhost.localdomain vs localhost has no effect.
Sorry, but it _has_ an effect, as you point out yourself. It's the _first_ name which is used for IP->Name resolution. So with the current 127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost 127.0.0.1 resolves to "localhost.localdomain". We are (at least) proposing to use: 127.0.0.1 localhost localhost.localdomain so that it resolves to just "localhost". "localhost.localdomain" is just _ugly_ as hell and 127.0.0.1<->"localhost" is common UNIX, as Michael already pointed out in his original filing. Actually, changing the 127.0.0.1 line in /etc/hosts is something I do on every machine I install. "localhost.localdomain" makes me puke (as does sendmail). :-)
It has no effect in the examples given, which had a hostname. You need to set a hostname for your computer to get the desired behaviour. If you don't, I could care less how aesthetically beautiful you think 'localhost.localdomain' is - it works fine :)