On 22 Oct 1996, Neal Becker wrote:
> The problem I had yesterday with receiver_unqualified_hosts was that
> localhost wasn't included, even though I had previously set
>
> receiver_unqualified_hosts = *.ctd.comsat.com
>
> A connection from the local machine was not recognized by this entry
> until I changed it to:
>
> receiver_unqualified_hosts = *.ctd.comsat.com:localhost
The way this works is that the sender's IP address is looked up by
gethostbyaddr(). What you are asking is that, if gethostbyaddr() yields
an unqualified address (e.g. localhost), then it should be qualified.
What would this have yielded in your case? localhost.ctd.comsat.com or
localhost.comsat.com?
> So I'm asking, shouldn't we always qualify hostnames for all such
> comparisons?
The local host primary name, if unqualified, is canonicized by calling
gethostbyname(). I am not convinced that this would always work, or give
the right answer, though I suppose it might be better than the current
state.
Does anyone else on the list have a view, please?
In particular, is "localhost" special?
--
Philip Hazel University Computing Service,
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