Feature changed by: Carlos Robinson (robin_listas)
Feature #308824, revision 22
Title: Drop appending 127.0.0.2 line to /etc/hosts (incl. related
configuration options)
openSUSE Distribution: New
Priority
Requester: Mandatory
Requested by: Katarina Machalkova (kmachalkova)
Requested by: Ludwig Nussel (lnussel)
Product Manager: Federico Lucifredi (flucifredi)
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.
#9: Marius Tomaschewski (mtomaschewski) (2011-05-20 22:52:13)
Changed WRITE_HOSTNAME_TO_HOSTS to "no" (thanks for the patch Ludwig)
in http://gitorious.org/opensuse/sysconfig/commit/9beeb884d295eb101175b11591a54...
#10: Marius Tomaschewski (mtomaschewski) (2011-05-20 22:57:13)
Removed also the corresponding 127.0.0.2 address from ifcfg-lo:
http://gitorious.org/opensuse/sysconfig/commit/ffc50234f05b556c0050f9dcd3ce5...
#11: Carlos Robinson (robin_listas) (2013-06-10 14:58:36)
Why has this been rejected? 11.3 may be done, but 12.3 is not and has
this problem
#12: Carlos Robinson (robin_listas) (2013-06-12 19:41:45)
Some people say that it is postfix fault. This is the answer from the
postfix people: +++···································· Date: Wed, 12
Jun 2013 12:36:55 -0400 (EDT) Reply-To: Postfix users