On Wednesday 06 August 2003 14:25, Scott Mcdermott wrote:
>donald.ritchey AT exeloncorp DOT com on Wed  6/08 12:26 -0500:
>> How far do you want to take your paranoia?  I take it
>> pretty far as a system admin, but I think I know where to
>> draw the line.
>
>what are you talking about? you think if anyone with root on
>any client amanda backs up, or the DNS admin, can restore
>files from any amanda-backed-up machine, that is paranoia?
>I'm glad you don't work for us...
>
>> I am not sure why you insist on clinging so stubbornly to
>> localhost for DLEs,
>
>only because no one seems to have a solid technical reason
>not want to use them, but just talk about some kind of
>voodoo magic; I don't cling to using localhost at all, I'm
>merely saying there is nothing wrong with it (and my backups
>run fine with it)
>
>> use properly documented FQDNs for their systems.
>
>ok how about localhost.localdomain.  That's an FQDN.

No its not, its a univesal name for all machines.

>seriously, I agree that the real machine name should be used
>if only for correctness; I only wish to understand WHY it is
>said to be wrong and cause problems.

The only 100% bulletproof alternative to the FQDN is that FQDN's ip 
address, NOT 127.0.0.1 either.

I'm like Randy, this horse has no more liquid blood, riger mortis has 
well and truely set in...  We preach against it, its in the FAQ, and 
in the docs in the archives.  You been given several good, not always 
security related reasons why its a bad practice.  Some of them have 
come from longtime highly experienced, teaching on the side 
SysAdmins, like Jon.  Me?  I'm just a home user who happens to have 
been bit by it too, so I had a lot of wheels to re-invent before I 
was back to "my" system.

Go your own way, but when a recovery goes south, we don't want to hear 
about it.

Jean-Louis, JRJ:  How about a new subroutine that checks the DLE's and 
sumarily rejects anything resembling 'localhost'.  Call it from both 
amcheck AND amdump before they do anything else.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
AMD K6-III@500mhz 320M
Athlon1600XP@1400mhz  512M
99.27% setiathome rank, not too shabby for a WV hillbilly
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Copyright 2003 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.