[TUHS] [COFF] Pondering the hosts file

[Clem Cole]

The SRI file was different format.   There was a tool that fetched and
converted from the PDP-10 scheme to the UNIX scheme - gethtable(8) or
something like that.
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On Thu, Mar 11, 2021 at 1:08 PM Warner Losh <imp at bsdimp.com> wrote:

>
>
> On Thu, Mar 11, 2021 at 10:40 AM Bakul Shah <bakul at iitbombay.org> wrote:
>
>> From https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?hosts(5)
>>
>> For each host a single line should be present with the following information:
>>
>> 	   Internet address
>> 	   official host name
>> 	   aliases
>>
>> *HISTORY* <https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?hosts(5)#end>
>>      The *hosts* file format appeared in 4.2BSD.
>>
>>
> While this is true wrt the history of FreeBSD/Unix, I'm almost positive
> that BSD didn't invent it. I'm pretty sure it was picked up from the
> existing host file that was published by sri-nic.arpa before DNS.
>
> Warner
>
>
>> On Mar 11, 2021, at 9:14 AM, Grant Taylor via TUHS <tuhs at minnie.tuhs.org>
>> wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I'm not sure where this message best fits; TUHS, COFF, or Internet
>> History, so please forgive me if this list is not the best location.
>>
>> I'm discussing the hosts file with someone and was wondering if there's
>> any historical documentation around it's format and what should and should
>> not be entered in the file.
>>
>> I've read the current man page on Gentoo Linux, but suspect that it's far
>> from authoritative.  I'm hoping that someone can point me to something more
>> authoritative to the hosts file's format, guidelines around entering data,
>> and how it's supposed to function.
>>
>> A couple of sticking points in the other discussion revolve around how
>> many entries a host is supposed to have in the hosts file and any
>> ramifications for having a host appear as an alias on multiple lines /
>> entries.  To whit, how correct / incorrect is the following:
>>
>> 192.0.2.1    host.example.net    host
>> 127.0.0.1    localhost    host.example.net    host
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Grant. . . .
>> unix || die
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> COFF mailing list
>> COFF at minnie.tuhs.org
>> https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff
>>
>
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