Do not use lfs.org as a domain name

[Pierre Labastie]

The default for the domain name in the host configuration is lfs.org. Should be changed, since lfs.org is a registered domain, which has nothing to do with Linux From scratch.

[Pierre Labastie]

Using something illegal (**EDITME for example) and testing it in jhalfs is not fair to users, because it is in a submenu the user may just not open and not see... In this ​HowTo, you can find some reasons to use "local". Roughly, if avahi is present on the machine with a full name of the form hostname.local, it can be found by name on the local network, instead of by address. OTOH, that may be a bad choice for some other configurations see ​this blog. The use of "local" is defined in ​RFC 6762. Here is a extract:

However, the majority of home computer users do not have easy access to any portion of the global DNS namespace within which they have the authority to create names. This leaves the majority of home computers effectively anonymous for practical purposes. To remedy this problem, this document allows any computer user to elect to give their computers link-local Multicast DNS host names of the form: "single-dns-label.local.". For example, a laptop computer may answer to the name "MyComputer.local.". Any computer user is granted the authority to name their computer this way, provided that the chosen host name is not already in use on that link. Having named their computer this way, the user has the authority to continue utilizing that name until such time as a name conflict occurs on the link that is not resolved in the user's favor. [...]

Now, as long as the local network is isolated from global internet, and specially from outside DNS, you can use any domain name. This is the case if using the network stack from qemu, as the other default addresses suggest. So why bother?

Well, advising users to use registered domain names might not be a good idea, if they happen to misconfigure their DNS... Names which are guaranteed to work on local networks and to be harmless on global internet are example{,.com,.net,.org}. See ​RFC 6761 But they normally are reserved for documentation.

Another possibility is to use .test names (​RFC 6761). They should not be recognized as special by softwares, but are recognized as non existent by caching DNS and root DNS.

All in all, I think "local" default is the most adapted for what we think users will do. Otherwise, "lfs.test" might be not too bad. Comments?

[bdubbs@…]

I'm not 100% sure of the use of this entry. If it to create resolve.conf, then then if the value it EDITME, then just omit the domain entry.

If it is used to create the hosts file, then just omit the fqdn from the line with the static ip address if it is EDITME.

Another option if the value is EDITME is to check it when doing the sanity check and tell the user to fix it.

[Pierre Labastie]

It's used in both. My concern is that the users may not be aware they would have to set that name, because it is hidden in a submenu. It is not fair to check and come back with a message "you forgot to set the domain name" or so, if the user has not even seen that the domain name needed to be edited. And silently ignoring the name if not set is maybe worse.

I plan to add help about that (and the hostname), with references to the RFC's. But for me "local" seems to be a sane default. It may be a problem when the network uses active directory, but in this case, the user is in a corporation or institution, and should have received instructions about host- and domain- names. I'll make clear in the help that the names used should be as given by the person in charge of the network (note that if the user is the person in charge of the network, they should know what they are doing).

[Pierre Labastie]

Fixed at r3969