Re: CVS commit: src/bin/hostname

[Robert Elz <kre%munnari.OZ.AU@localhost>]

    Date:        Wed, 24 Jul 2013 18:24:42 +0200
    From:        Edgar =?iso-8859-1?B?RnXf?= <ef%math.uni-bonn.de@localhost>
    Message-ID:  <20130724162442.GD65056%trav.math.uni-bonn.de@localhost>

  | Yes. It's trivial to truncate the hostname at the first dot, whereas it's 
  | a pain to retrieve the missing part.

It isn't just "a pain", it is not always possible, any way at all (without
human assistance.)

The hostname was always intended to contain the globally unique textual name
of the host - someone said that it couldn't have always been a FQDN, as they
didn't exist when the hostname syscall was created, and that's correct.  But 
back then hostnames (including before even ".arpa" was appended) were
registered and intended to be unique (it was the growing absurdity of
continuing that in a flat namespace that led to the development of the DNS).

Using a (trivially derived) nickname as the hostname instead of the actual
(unique) hostname is simply stupid.

kre

ps: all those new args to hostname(1) should be removed, they have nothing
whatever do do with hostnames, aside from possibly -f, which is what
hostname (absent -s) should always display.   What's more they should be
removed very soon, before anyone can possibly start to reply upon them.