RE: editfiles methodology question

[Mark Burgess]

On Sun, 2005-11-06 at 14:47 -0800, David Masterson wrote:
> Mark Burgess wrote:
> >> Regarding short_hostname, on my system '/bin/hostname' returns the
> >> FQDN. If I try using $(host), I just get the FQDN. Is that normal?
> >> That's why I'm using my own variable.
> > 
> > This is normal if you have fully qualified names returned by your
> > hostname lookup, which is not something I recommend.
> 
> There is a discussion going on here about the merits of FQDN vs. simple
> hostname.  Would you care to elaborate on your reasons for not recommending
> FQDN in hostname lookup?
> 

Just as a matter of principle that you don't mix different kinds of
information. It is the principle of "normalization" or "normal forms" in
database theory.  The hostname is one item of information, the domain
name is another. You should be able to change and manage them
independently of one another. If you always store the domain name as the
host identity then you have made it very hard to separate those two
pieces of information, and have made relative information absolute.
It is also possible to record information that is incorrect and does not
match information in DNS this way. Again. normalization says this is a
bad idea.

M