-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Wednesday 06 August 2003 11:45, Scott Mcdermott wrote: > Gene Heskett on Tue 5/08 20:02 -0400: > > > I've heard this before. What exactly is the problem with > > > localhost? Could you elaborate? > > > > Primarily its a security issue because *any* machine can > > be localhost. By using the FQDN, there is then no > > ambiguity as to which machine is being addressed. Its > > simply good practice. > > > > amrecover and amrestore IIRC are trained to reject > > localhost because the files are portable, and trying to > > restore to localhost might even try to restore a wintel > > boxes code to a box with a moto cpu in it. Thats a bit > > far fetched, but that is one scenario that won't, for > > obvious reasons, work. > > [..snip..] > > but localhost is a valid, relative hostname. If I put > "localhost" in a DLE, then localhost is a known, unchanging > machine, relative to the machine that is using the name > "localhost"
Too many times, I have seen network-aware software mis-behave when "localhost" is specified even though localhost was properly defined in the hosts file. One example that has burned me a couple of times is attempting to use Netscape to reach localhost. I have seen Netscape load pages off the net when given the url: http://localhost/. Shouldn't happen, but that does not prevent it from happening. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.2-rc1-SuSE (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE/MWih+ShVRkQlJBIRAiLsAJ41uOLVG4E6/tlKXVW6erbqbtvHYACdFJ7H OasLFjLzZUynjZxcVPKghJs= =scNx -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----