more comments on Fedora Core

[Gordon Messmer]

shrek-m at gmx.de wrote:
> Elton Woo wrote:
> 
>> On September 27, 2003 08:08 pm, Dave Ashby <Dave Ashby 
>> <dave.ashby at 1993.usna.com>> wrote:
>>
>>> Make sure the first line in your /etc/hosts file is 127.0.0.1 and your
>>> box name (technically FQN and then nickname). If you have other entries
>>> above it, sendmail will hang during boot.
>>
>> My /etc/hosts file:
>> # Do not remove the following line, or various programs
>> # that require network functionality will fail.
>> 127.0.0.1    localhost.localdomain    localhost
>> 127.0.0.1    dhcp-133-74        localhost
> 
> i think that the second line with 127.0.0.1 will be ignored
> try this, all in *one* line
> 
> 127.0.0.1    dhcp-133-74 localhost.localdomain localhost
> 
> and sendmail should start in a short time.


Horseshit, all of it.  The order of lines in the hosts file doesn't 
matter.  All lines present will be processed.

Sendmail takes a long time to boot because it calls gethostbyname (or 
something like it) for information on the addresses associated with the 
local hostname.  If all of the required data isn't in /etc/hosts, then 
the resolver needs to do a DNS lookup on your hostname.

If your hostname is an FQDN, then that FQDN must appear in /etc/hosts. 
If my hostname is "host1.example.com", then /etc/hosts should contain at 
least these entries:
127.0.0.1	localhost.localdomain localhost
127.0.0.1	host1.example.com

If your hostname is *not* an FQDN, then your hosts file must contain 
both the short version of the local hostname, and its FQDN, as the 
resolver is going to search for it based on the "search" entry in 
/etc/resolv.conf.  If my hostname is "host1" and /etc/resolv.conf 
contains the line "search example.com", then the file /etc/hosts must 
have at least these entries:
127.0.0.1	localhost.localdomain localhost
127.0.0.1	host1.example.com host1

As long as your hosts file contains an entry for the local hostname, and 
the FQDN (which should be the same thing), sendmail will not need to 
consult DNS, and will start up properly.