On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 09:28:27PM +0000, Alan Chandler wrote: > I am extremely confused about host lookup works now that avahi daemon > has been added into the equation. > > my /etc/nsswitch.conf file has this in it for the host entry > > hosts: files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4 > > But as much as I google, I can find absolutely no explanation of what > mdns4_minimal does. > > In particular - if one does a host lookup and its not found in files > (presumably /etc/hosts) and not found by mdns4_minimal, does > the "[NOTFOUND=return]" stop the lookup process from using the dns. (It > clearly doesn't - so presumably mdns4_minimal does something else) > > Coupled with that - I am not sure if there is a command line command > which uses this mechanism of host lookup. The man page for "host" > command and the one for the "dig" command effectily say they are only > doing a dns lookup. > > Why am I asking; > > I am doing some planning on how to change my home network when I (very > shortly now) acquire a linux laptop. > > I will want to use it to develop some simple javascript/php/html/css web > applications - and therefore will want to run apache web server. > Ideally I would like a number of separate virtual hosts, for each > separate application but > > a) When I am disconnected from the network I still need to see the host > names (so I assume I use /etc/hosts to give aliases to localhost?)
Yes, though this will break any proper usage of those names, so you'll eventually need to remove them. > b) When I am connected to the local home network I want to have other > people see these virtual hosts so that I can test some multiuser > aspects of the applications. In this case, I could either use avahi to > publish these names (although at the moment I can't quite work out > how - it seems only to publish a single host name derived from > the /etc/hostname), or make sure the names are properly identified in > my local dns (I can allocate the IP address based on the mac address of > the laptop thereby ensuring it always has the same one) > > But without understanding the basics, I can't really proceed to plan. You can also check the host name resolution using getent hosts some.hostname -- Tzafrir Cohen | tzaf...@jabber.org | VIM is http://tzafrir.org.il | | a Mutt's tzaf...@cohens.org.il | | best ICQ# 16849754 | | friend -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
