Merging upstream version 6.8.

Signed-off-by: Daniel Baumann <daniel.baumann@progress-linux.org>

1 files changed, 122 insertions, 0 deletions

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+.\" Copyright (c) 2000 Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org>
+.\"
+.\" SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0-or-later
+.\"
+.\" Minor polishing, aeb
+.\" Modified, 2002-06-16, Mike Coleman
+.\"
+.TH hosts 5 2024-05-02 "Linux man-pages (unreleased)"
+.SH NAME
+hosts \- static table lookup for hostnames
+.SH SYNOPSIS
+.nf
+.B /etc/hosts
+.fi
+.SH DESCRIPTION
+This manual page describes the format of the
+.I /etc/hosts
+file.
+This file is a simple text file that associates IP addresses
+with hostnames, one line per IP address.
+For each host a single
+line should be present with the following information:
+.RS
+.P
+IP_address canonical_hostname [aliases...]
+.RE
+.P
+The IP address can conform to either IPv4 or IPv6.
+Fields of the entry are separated by any number of blanks and/or
+tab characters.
+Text from a "#" character until the end of the line is
+a comment, and is ignored.
+Host names may contain only alphanumeric
+characters, minus signs ("\-"), and periods (".").
+They must begin with an
+alphabetic character and end with an alphanumeric character.
+Optional aliases provide for name changes, alternate spellings,
+shorter hostnames, or generic hostnames (for example,
+.IR localhost ).
+If required, a host may have two separate entries in this file;
+one for each version of the Internet Protocol (IPv4 and IPv6).
+.P
+The Berkeley Internet Name Domain (BIND) Server implements the
+Internet name server for UNIX systems.
+It augments or replaces the
+.I /etc/hosts
+file or hostname lookup, and frees a host from relying on
+.I /etc/hosts
+being up to date and complete.
+.P
+In modern systems, even though the host table has been superseded by
+DNS, it is still widely used for:
+.TP
+.B bootstrapping
+Most systems have a small host table containing the name and address
+information for important hosts on the local network.
+This is useful
+when DNS is not running, for example during system bootup.
+.TP
+.B NIS
+Sites that use NIS use the host table as input to the NIS host
+database.
+Even though NIS can be used with DNS, most NIS sites still
+use the host table with an entry for all local hosts as a backup.
+.TP
+.B isolated nodes
+Very small sites that are isolated from the network use the host table
+instead of DNS.
+If the local information rarely changes, and the
+network is not connected to the Internet, DNS offers little
+advantage.
+.SH FILES
+.I /etc/hosts
+.SH NOTES
+Modifications to this file normally take effect immediately,
+except in cases where the file is cached by applications.
+.SS Historical notes
+RFC\ 952 gave the original format for the host table, though it has
+since changed.
+.P
+Before the advent of DNS, the host table was the only way of resolving
+hostnames on the fledgling Internet.
+Indeed, this file could be
+created from the official host data base maintained at the Network
+Information Control Center (NIC), though local changes were often
+required to bring it up to date regarding unofficial aliases and/or
+unknown hosts.
+The NIC no longer maintains the hosts.txt files,
+though looking around at the time of writing (circa 2000), there are
+historical hosts.txt files on the WWW.
+I just found three, from 92,
+94, and 95.
+.SH EXAMPLES
+.EX
+# The following lines are desirable for IPv4 capable hosts
+127.0.0.1       localhost
+\&
+# 127.0.1.1 is often used for the FQDN of the machine
+127.0.1.1       thishost.example.org   thishost
+192.168.1.10    foo.example.org        foo
+192.168.1.13    bar.example.org        bar
+146.82.138.7    master.debian.org      master
+209.237.226.90  www.opensource.org
+\&
+# The following lines are desirable for IPv6 capable hosts
+::1             localhost ip6\-localhost ip6\-loopback
+ff02::1         ip6\-allnodes
+ff02::2         ip6\-allrouters
+.EE
+.SH SEE ALSO
+.BR hostname (1),
+.BR resolver (3),
+.BR host.conf (5),
+.BR resolv.conf (5),
+.BR resolver (5),
+.BR hostname (7),
+.BR named (8)
+.P
+Internet RFC\ 952
+.\" .SH AUTHOR
+.\" This manual page was written by Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org>,
+.\" for the Debian GNU/Linux system.