openssh-2.9p2, short hostnames

[Nicolas Williams]

On Tue, Oct 02, 2001 at 10:37:47AM -0500, openssh-unix-dev at thewrittenword.com wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 02, 2001 at 09:32:18AM +0200, Hans Werner Strube wrote:
> > >
> > > > > For systems where the local hostname is obtained as a short name without
> > > > > domain, there should be a ssh_config option "DefaultDomain" as in ssh-3.x
> > > > > from ssh.com.
> > > > Below there is a patch which implements this. But it does not abort (as
> > > > ssh-3.x does) if the host name is not FQDN, since within the local net
> > > > there is no need for this. By making the config entry conditional for names
> > > > with dots, a short "chost" name can be used within the local net and the
> > > > FQDN otherwise:
> > > > Host *.*
> > > >    DefaultDomain my.local.net
> > > > Host *
> > > > #  no DefaultDomain
> > > 
> > > I don't think it is a good idea to hack _ssh_ to support this.  Why don't
> > > you use FQDN's as hostnames like most of the other people?
> > 
> > For instance, because FQDNs blow up the netgroup entries. Then large
> > netgroups would be difficult to treat with NIS, since the NIS ndbm records
> > are limited to 1024 bytes. This is a historical burden of Solaris. Also it
> > is usually much more convenient to work with short names *within* a local
> > network. (Well, I know, in principle you are right, and some PD programs
> > have difficulties constructing the FQDN then ...)
> 
> While the length of a key's value is 1024 bytes, you can break the
> value so it references other *keys* and therefore work around this
> limitation. If you generate the NDBM maps directly from text files
> though, your kinda screwed unless you somehow automate this process.

The reverse maps are the ones used by innetgr() on Solaris. The reverse
maps' keys are named after users and hosts, and the values are
comma-separated lists of netgroups the users/hosts belong to.

There's no way to break those up.

> -- 
> albert chin (china at thewrittenword.com)


Nico
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