On Thu 22 Mar 2018 at 12:44:53 -0500, David Wright wrote: [...]
> Here are my points, as it's a month since I made them. I didn't > quite answer the question as posed. > > --✄------ > > > that as well as being asked to supply a hostname I've also been asked > > to supply a domain value. > > > > What, on a home LAN, is that used for? > > Nothing, with the possible exceptions of: > > . avoiding this message at boot up: > Mon Feb 19 04:58:38 2018: [....] Starting MTA:hostname --fqdn did not > return a fully qualified name, > Mon Feb 19 04:58:38 2018: dc_minimaldns will not work. Please fix your > /etc/hosts setup. > > . satisfying a broken smarthost¹, > > . causing some discussion here. > > --✄------ > > My last point may become less true over time because, as I already > just posted, there is now an authoritative answer: If you don't > know what to put, put home, corp, or mail, as you wish. They are > guaranteed never to become TLDs in the future. The d-i prompt says: > The domain name is the part of your Internet address to the right of your > host name. It is often something that ends in .com, .net, .edu, or .org. > If you are setting up a home network, you can make something up, but make > sure you use the same domain name on all your computers. There you are: a home user can just invent something. mybrilliantdomain.com would do. Why agonise over it. Whatever is chosen goes into /etc/hosts. A long time ago, the advice was: > Please enter your domain name or leave this field empty if you don't have > a domain. > Currently I have an empty string. When I next reorganise my network > here to include bridging, I might consider using .home (it's the > most appropriate). It affords me no particular advantage as far as > I can see, but I remain open to persuasion that it has some use. > What exactly, though? (Still a genuine question, but keep off email > or we're in danger of getting in a loop.) An empty string is fine. Just do it; you will be happy with it. > I'm not convinced that I, and many in my situation, would be better > off running a mail server rather than having an organisation run a > smarthost to do it on my behalf. (They also take care of incoming mail > by running an IMAP server.) Nobody has really tried to convince you that running a mail server is better for *you*. (You actually do run a mail server but use it for relaying, not sending directly. Greg Wooledge's posts are very informative. Please try to see the distinctions). > I think the political discussion arises here because people don't > recognise that just contributing to this list makes one unusual in > itself (and I include myself in that). There may be divers diverse > reasons to run a mail server, but count me out along with many others. Ben Finney's post really got to you, didn't it? https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2018/03/msg00738.html -- Brian.
