Actually it should make a visible difference (although not obvious). For 
instance, if you  ping the host (the one with the bad /etc/hosts ) from 
itself using the short name then the output of ping will show the  IP address 
of the loopback and not the one associated to the NIC.

 You don't say what /etc/hosts had the wrong line but I bet it was the one on 
the linux client. This is a typical situation on RedHat and SuSE.  I don't 
believe anybody  did it manually.  It comes with the package.

 Having the wrong configuration on the /etc/hosts one can expect any weird 
behaviour (because the same hostname is associated to two different IP 
adresses! )  This is a problem for the resolver.

 The Nw client will lookup the hosts file for a match on the shortname and 
will stop after the first match which happens to be the loopback(!). It will 
send that information back to the NW server which will save the index 
according to it (i.e. "I am localhost") . A typical error is the "SYSTEM 
error cannot find host..."

 If you had moved your "localhost"  line (without fixing it) to some line 
after the real "hosrname" entry the problem would have also disappeared.

 I have installed SuSe 10.0 at home today and the first thing I did after the 
installation was to remove that entry from /etc/hosts.  I knew it would be 
there. I don't know why they do it, but they do and it is wrong.  Just be 
aware of this and make sure the /etc/hosts is configured manually.



On Tuesday 25 July 2006 2:39, Brian O'Neill wrote:
> Looks like I have a solution. I had looked at the /etc/hosts file many
> times, but there was one of those "invisble" problems. It SHOULDN'T have
> made a difference but it did.
>
> The short name of the host had been added by someone to the localhost
> 127.0.0.1 line, so my entries had no real effect.
>
> Apparently, this confuses Networker to no end, and causes the server to
> use its on index for the store. Bizarre.
>
> -Brian
>
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