Re: [leafnode-list] I have had a go (was Basic configuration questions

[krasel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Cornelius Krasel)]

David Oddie wrote:

> Where is my machine "named"?  Is that in the /etc/hosts?

No. This actually depends very much on the distribution. In any case,
during the startup the machine will at some point call the programs
"hostname" - which sets the hostname (in your case, "localhost") -
and a program called either "domainname" or "dnsdomainname" - which
sets the domain name (in your case, "localdomain").

AFAIK, "localhost" is a reserved word. This is not true for "localdomain".

> Or would putting "leafnode: ALL EXCEPT localhost.localdomain" in
> /etc/hosts.deny solve it as an alternative to your suggestion below?

That might work.

> Since LOCAL seems meaningless on my machine if I do leafnode:
> 127.0.0.1 as you suggest below in /etc.hosts.allow I am guessing there
> must be a more appropriate line for /etc/hosts.deny to block the
> outside world from my news server?

The files /etc/hosts.allow and /etc/hosts.deny are queried in the order
hosts.allow --> hosts.deny. That means, if a host is found in hosts.allow,
access is allowed. Else, if the host is found in hosts.deny, access is
denied. If a host is not found in either file, access is allowed.

This means that, if you put

leafnode: 127.0.0.1

into /etc/hosts.allow, the behaviour of /etc/hosts.deny will not be
affected. However, you can write

leafnode: ALL

into /etc/hosts.deny - just to make sure that nobody is able to somehow
spoof "LOCAL" (although I have no idea how one would try to do that).

> BTW, since I put the text "localhost" in the /etc/nntpserver file do I
> need to change that as well?  I understood the entry in this file was
> supposed to be the name of the machine and mine appears to be
> "localhost.localdomain".

No. As explained above, "localhost" points always (?) to 127.0.0.1 which
incidentally is a reserved IP number of your machine.

> I am unclear as to what uses this file and its relationship to
> leafnode.

Leafnode does not use this file; however, a number of news clients (e.g.
tin) do. Some startup scripts also obtain the value of $NNTPSERVER
(which is a shell variable, not a link) from this file. Again, this
depends on your distribution. You can see the current value of
$NNPTSERVER by typing at the shell prompt
	echo $NNTPSERVER

Hope that helps,
--Cornelius.

-- 
/* Cornelius Krasel, U Wuerzburg, Dept. of Pharmacology, Versbacher Str. 9 */
/* D-97078 Wuerzburg, Germany   email: phak004@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx  SP4 */
/* "Science is the game we play with God to find out what His rules are."  */

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