Note: This bug is displayed in read-only format because the product is no longer active in Red Hat Bugzilla.

For bugs related to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 product line. The current stable release is 5.10. For Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 and above, please visit Red Hat JIRA https://issues.redhat.com/secure/CreateIssue!default.jspa?pid=12332745 to report new issues.

Bug 665962

Summary:	/etc/host.conf is obsolete
Product:	Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5	Reporter:	ritz <rkhadgar>
Component:	setup	Assignee:	Ondrej Vasik <ovasik>
Status:	CLOSED NOTABUG	QA Contact:	qe-baseos-daemons
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	low
Version:	5.6	CC:	spoyarek
Target Milestone:	rc
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	Unspecified
OS:	Unspecified
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:
Clones:	665964 (view as bug list)		Environment:
Last Closed:	2011-01-03 11:53:17 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description ritz 2010-12-28 05:44:53 UTC

Description of problem:
/etc/host.conf gives no indication that it has been deprecated. Adding comment to the file would be helpful for new users.

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

How reproducible:
always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. cat /etc/host.conf
  
Actual results:
no indication it is deprecated

Expected results:
Should be documented in man pages, /etc/host.conf file itself

Additional info:
reference - https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=144687

Comment 1 Ondrej Vasik 2011-01-03 11:53:17 UTC

Well - I tend to say this is NOTABUG - as /etc/host.conf is still in use in
glibc. Anyway - man page documenting host.conf
file is coming from man-pages package and glibc resolve/res_hconf.c still uses
/etc/host.conf - so I think https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=144687
is no longer correct.

Feel free to explain why it should be considered deprecated - and discuss this
with glibc maintainer - Andreas Schwab - first. Closing NOTABUG - file still in
use (and res_hconf.c uses it by default - with no use of nsswitch.conf).

Comment 2 Siddhesh Poyarekar 2011-04-21 07:21:42 UTC

host.conf is in fact used by glibc and is not completely obsolete. But there is no
reason for it to be installed by default with the line:

order bind,hosts

since the order keyword is precisely the one that does not do anything anymore.
Keeping this intact in a default installation gives the wrong impression that
the line is in use.

At the minimum, we could remove this 'order' line and install a blank file in
case removal of the file creates confusion about the file not being in use at
all.

Can we reopen this bz?