Feature changed by: Ludwig Nussel (lnussel) Feature #308824, revision 13 Title: Drop appending 127.0.0.2 line to /etc/hosts (incl. related configuration options) - openSUSE-11.3: Rejected by (mge1512) + openSUSE-11.3: Rejected by Matthias Eckermann (mge1512) reject date: 2010-09-07 17:04:55 reject reason: 11.3 is done. Priority Requester: Important openSUSE-11.4: Evaluation by product manager Priority Requester: Neutral + openSUSE Distribution: Unconfirmed + Priority + Requester: Mandatory Requested by: Katarina Machalkova (kmachalkova) Requested by: Ludwig Nussel (lnussel) Product Manager: (Novell) Product Manager: (Novell) Technical Contact: (Novell) Partner organization: openSUSE.org Description: For years, SUSE-based products have been appending '127.0.0.2 host. domain host' to /etc/hosts as a convenience for applications which want to resolve the hostname and which thus become irresponsive without active network [1] Localhost IP associated with FQDN however causes various network services (samba, SLP, LDAP, ntp, ... ) to behave oddly [2]. An option in product-wide control files has been introduced so as not to append 127.0.0.2 on server-oriented products (SLES) - FaTE#303875, while keeping user the possibility to override the default in GUI and AutoYaST profile. Nevertheless, even reasonably set default doesn't prevent misconfigurations and user complaints [3] The suggestion is therefore to drop 127.0.0.2 modification of /etc/hosts altogether and drop GUI/control options associated with configuration thereof. These include: * GUI option in YaST installer * XML profile elements in AutoYaST * Variable in product-wide control file (control.xml) * Possibly also sysconfig variable Appending 127.0.0.2 line has always been sort of workaround for flawed (mostly) desktop applications and DNS servers, so rather than providing workaround with plethora of side effects, it'd more reasonable to have affected apps fixed. Bugs have been filed against some of them and fixed already. References: [1] Apps become slow when offline bugs https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=304632 https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=383336 [2] Network services going insane with localhost IP associated with FQDN https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=207392 https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=355608 https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=570108 [3] Even reasonably set default doesn't help https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=510228 [4] Related discussion on topic on research@suse.de http://fourier.suse.de/mlarch/SuSE/research/2010/research.2010.01 /msg00044.html Discussion: #1: H. Hansen (cyberbeat) (2010-03-07 23:27:08) I also often had trouble with java rmi because of this. -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/308824