From: Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com>
To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org
Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] /etc/hosts include file?
Date: Fri, 08 Mar 2013 10:23:31 +0200 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <5139A003.6030909@gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAA2qdGVHxS1NgtCgpbDhNoTfWPK-szgRJCN_yae5e_EenTYNxA@mail.gmail.com>
On 08/03/2013 06:30, Pandu Poluan wrote:
>
> On Mar 8, 2013 5:27 AM, "Alan McKinnon" <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com
> <mailto:alan.mckinnon@gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>> Anyone know if there's a way to get /etc/hosts to support the notion of
>> an include file? I did my homework and found nothing, maybe someone else
>> knows more.
>>
>> I really do need this, I have an app that discovers things on the
>> network and knows their address. This makes it's automated way into DNS
>> but takes a few days, and another app needs to use the fqdn right now.
>> So /etc/hosts is the way to go for the interim three days.
>>
>> I've worked around it by creating /etc/hosts.d/ containing a header and
>> a data file. cat the two and redirect to /etc/hosts.d/hosts and the real
>> hosts file is a symlink to that. It's a sub-directory as none of these
>> apps run as root and only root can modiy the real hosts file.
>>
>> This works well enough, but a supported include mechanism would make
>> life so much simpler, not to mention easier for my colleagues to
>> understand what the blazes I set up :-)
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Alan McKinnon
>> alan.mckinnon@gmail.com <mailto:alan.mckinnon@gmail.com>
>>
>>
>>
>
> An option would be to create a cron job which generates the hosts file
> every minute. The cron job should also insert a header on top of the
> hosts file telling:
>
> + this file (hosts) is dynamically generated
> + by a system cron job
> + the cron job's script location
>
> Besides, you said you're going to need this workaround only for a couple
> of days, so installing Samba4 might be an overkill.
I'm already doing something very much like that, I reckon I'll leave it
in place, and document it in the grand CYA tradition.
To be clear, it's not a temporary workaround - it's permanent. I do
network discovery every 12 hours and can find up to 7000 things on the
network, so now I know their hostname and address. This eventually makes
it's way into DNS, but DNS by design updates slowly and a second app (an
audit app) needs to resolve the names immediately. That's why hosts is
the perfect interim solution; in 3 days when the DNS update happens the
entry is removed from the hosts file.
--
--
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com
prev parent reply other threads:[~2013-03-08 8:25 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 48+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2013-03-07 22:24 [gentoo-user] /etc/hosts include file? Alan McKinnon
2013-03-07 23:50 ` Michael Mol
2013-03-08 0:29 ` Michael Mol
2013-03-08 8:32 ` Alan McKinnon
2013-03-08 13:40 ` Michael Mol
2013-03-08 13:54 ` Alan McKinnon
2013-03-08 19:50 ` [Bulk] " Kevin Chadwick
2013-03-08 19:55 ` Michael Mol
2013-03-08 21:49 ` Kevin Chadwick
2013-03-08 22:36 ` Pandu Poluan
2013-03-09 0:50 ` Kevin Chadwick
2013-03-09 3:27 ` Michael Mol
2013-03-09 12:53 ` Kevin Chadwick
2013-03-10 21:28 ` Michael Mol
2013-03-11 23:09 ` Kevin Chadwick
2013-03-12 5:05 ` Michael Mol
2013-03-09 0:13 ` Walter Dnes
2013-03-09 0:41 ` Michael Mol
2013-03-10 1:42 ` Walter Dnes
2013-03-10 4:59 ` Michael Orlitzky
2013-03-10 21:09 ` Michael Mol
2013-03-10 5:19 ` Alan McKinnon
2013-03-10 21:07 ` Michael Mol
2013-03-10 21:43 ` Alan McKinnon
2013-03-10 22:02 ` Michael Mol
2013-03-11 4:00 ` Walter Dnes
2013-03-11 4:37 ` Michael Mol
2013-03-11 8:22 ` Alan McKinnon
2013-03-11 22:45 ` Walter Dnes
2013-03-11 23:39 ` Kevin Chadwick
2013-03-12 3:58 ` Walter Dnes
2013-03-12 0:25 ` Alan McKinnon
2013-03-12 2:02 ` Michael Mol
2013-03-12 11:29 ` Alan McKinnon
2013-03-13 0:26 ` [Bulk] " Kevin Chadwick
2013-03-11 23:31 ` Kevin Chadwick
2013-03-12 0:37 ` Alan McKinnon
2013-03-09 0:45 ` Kevin Chadwick
2013-03-09 3:21 ` Michael Mol
2013-03-09 12:53 ` Kevin Chadwick
2013-03-10 22:00 ` Michael Mol
2013-03-11 1:56 ` Michael Orlitzky
2013-03-11 2:33 ` Michael Mol
2013-03-11 22:34 ` Kevin Chadwick
2013-03-12 3:36 ` Michael Mol
2013-03-08 15:39 ` Florian Philipp
2013-03-08 4:30 ` Pandu Poluan
2013-03-08 8:23 ` Alan McKinnon [this message]
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