Re: panel error *** ORBit patch ***

[Elliot Lee <sopwith redhat com>]

On Thu, 13 Aug 1998, James Michael Mastros wrote:

> > DNS does not have to be involved, /etc/hosts is your friend.
> 
> Still, when the lookups fail, 127.0.0.1 is your friend.
> 
> In any case, how about this hack: when making the connection, check if both
> ends are the same machine -- and if so, ignore the given IPs/hostnames, and
> use 127.0.0.1 instead.

How are you going to check if both ends are on the same machine?

That's why we need hostnames! They do this for us! They _are_ the unique
identifier that distinguishes different hosts :-)

> > 	- The IP address pointed to by 'hostname' should reverse-resolve
> > 	  to a valid hostname (presumably, but not required to be, the FQDN)
> Why not just use IPs?

Why does the Internet need DNS at all?

Even with no human intervention at all, there are still things like
round-robin DNS and IPv6 to consider. (To get the IPv6 address, you need a
hostname).

> > 	- The 'hostname' and/or FQDN retrieved using the above procedure
> > 	  should be valid for the lifetime of a CORBA server (and the
> >	  [objects.)]
> This is the killer -- sometimes the `hostname` will resolve to a remote
> address, and then at a later point you will loose remote connectivity, or
> the address will change.  (This futzes X too, but there you can manualy
> overide it's guess where the server lives.)

ORBit doesn't care if _the IP address that 'hostname' points to_ is valid
for the lifetime of the CORBA server, only the 'hostname' itself. Just
point 'hostname' to a different IP address as needed, and new connections
will continue to succeed. 

-- Elliot
Progress (n.): The process through which Usenet has evolved from smart
people in front of dumb terminals to dumb people in front of smart
terminals.  -- obs@burnout.demon.co.uk