On Fri, 27 Jun 2003, Andrew Brown wrote:
> particularly if "localhost.dom.ain" isn't in the dns.  it really ought
> to be in the dns.

No, there is no need for localhost.dom.ain to be in the DNS.
There is also no need for it to be in /etc/hosts.

In my experience, everything work just fine if "localhost. A 127.0.0.1"
is in the DNS, and "127.0.0.1 localhost" is in /etc/hosts, and
if "localhost.${domain}" does not appear anywhere at all.  When
applications try to make network connections to "localhost" or send
mail to user@localhost, then there might or might not be a short delay
while a DNS or /etc/hosts lookup for localhost.${domain} is attempted
and returns a "no such host" status, but then the relevant libraries
will immediately look up plain "localhost", that will will succeed, and
everything works.

--apb (Alan Barrett)