Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!snorkelwacker!mintaka!ogicse!ucsd!ucbvax!VAX3.ITI.ORG!scs
From: scs@VAX3.ITI.ORG (Steve Simmons)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: Use Domain In Hostname Or Not?
Message-ID: <9002221758.AA09782@vax3>
Date: 22 Feb 90 16:58:19 GMT
References: <9002211437.AA01335@orbweb.spider.co.uk>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
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> scs%itivax%ox.com%umich%mailrus%cs.utexas.edu@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu
> (Steve Simmons) writes:
>
>"... I'm interested in any and all comments on why or why not to set
>hostname to FQDN...."    (FQDN = Fully Qualified Domain Name)
 . . .
>In practice, however, the implementations are never quite up to it.
>For example: . . .

>Your comment "The vendor agrees their performance isn't correct.."
>intrigues me, as in the face of the above diverse behaviour I'm
>confused as to what the correct behaviour IS.  If anyone can throw
>light on this, or what resolver calls are involved that produce the
>above behaviour, I would be very keen to more.

In this vendors case, we can make the system hang 100% reliably by
using unqualified names in the right circumstances.  The workarounds
(which do work, thank god!) require going 180 degrees to the vendors
and UCBs bind documentation on some points.  The vendor agrees the
documentation is correct, the performance incorrect.

To summarize the responses to my original item:

Almost everyone said we should go to FQDNs even though they were not
strictly required; the remainder claimed they were strictly required.
This requires rebuilding our sendmail.cfs :-( our news files :-( our
hosts files :-( our host.equiv files :-( . . . well, you get the idea.

In addition, there is one *major* problem with this: many
implementations allow a very limited size for the host name -- twelve
and sixteen characters are the sizes most often cited.  We have some of
these systems in-house, mercifully we also have short fqdns on almost
all systems (foo.iti.org).

The problems we have with unqualified host names seem to be surfacing
because so few sites use them in a true DNS enviroment.  As such, the
software for lots of packages has never been as thoroughly exercised in
this area and we are the 'first discoverers' of bugs (remember the
early days of intermixing YP and DNS?  That uncovered a lot of
previously unknown bugs).  Since many of our systems are from
proprietary vendors, we've decided to bite the bullet, make the changes
to all the things above, and get in step with the rest of the world.
Many thanks to all for the advice.

Steve