And anyone who can get local root on his/her workstation 
can use 'amrecover' to obtain any filesystem backed up from 
'localhost', since localhost is valid on any system.  This 
applies to all those sensitive file systems that are stored 
on your server and password/access protected to keep the
riff-raff out.

As has been repeatedly stated in this group before,
        Use of 'localhost' in DLEs is discouraged.

This is true for many reasons, not all of them obvious.

Don

Donald L. (Don) Ritchey
E-mail:  Donald.Ritchey AT exeloncorp DOT com


-----Original Message-----
From: Scott Mcdermott [mailto:smcdermott AT questra DOT com]
Sent: Wednesday, August 06, 2003 10:45 AM
To: amanda-users AT amanda DOT org
Subject: Re: how to get columns to line up in summary?


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.

but there is only *one* machine on which "localhost" is
used, and that is the amanda server, no? "localhost" always
means the same thing on that machine.

> Finally, amanda is a client/server model.  By using
> localhost, you are attempting to bypass that client/server
> relationship.

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"


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