Hi all,
Am 12.12.2025 um 13:54 schrieb [email protected]:
On Fri, Dec 12, 2025 at 12:17:30PM +0000, Loic Coupel wrote:
Hello,
Dear Debian User List
[...]
Besides, I don't believe you that the format of /etc/hosts changes
across GNU/Linux distros (no idea 'bout Android, and about Windows,
I couldn't care less, sorry).
Indeed a bold claim... all hosts files I have ever seen or used use
exactly the same format. Even on Windows.
The file format is afaik not formally defined but seems to date back to
early BSD implementations (as all the TCP/IP stack including the concept
of names and translating to addresses does). Any claim that it is used
inconsistently and even causes problems would need *very* good
foundations, I think.
In addition, the ticket referenced does not actually want to standardize
the hosts file format, it actually wants to introduce contens
consistency requirements which can, obviously, not be implemented in a
configuration file but would need to be part of the software using it.
Providing clear error messages when parsing it is also futile -- the
file is typically used by software without a user interface.
And, eventually -- in most linux distributions it is possible to find
out who is responsible for any particular file. On my debian systems, it
seems to be created by package netbase and 'apt show netbase' seems to
provide reasonable information.
However, seeing the problems with this particular project, I strongly
recommend not contacting more people right now, but rather spend some
days doing very detailed, in-depth research and make sure the claimed
shortcomings can actually be proven to be to be caused by host file
contents and would be fixed by a more strict file format. Keep in mind
this is a configuration file and will be customized.
This will most likely not succeed.
Cheers,
Arno
Cheers
--
Arno Lehmann
IT-Service Lehmann
Sandstr. 6, 49080 Osnabrück
