xfce4-session warning about an unresolvable local hostname

[Stephan Arts]

On Fri, Jul 22, 2011 at 1:52 PM, Guido Berhoerster <gber at opensuse.org> wrote:
> * Benedikt Meurer <benedikt.meurer at googlemail.com> [2011-07-22 08:54]:
>>
>> On Jul 22, 2011, at 00:14 , Nick Schermer wrote:
>>
>> > On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 9:37 PM, Guido Berhoerster <gber at opensuse.org> wrote:
>> >> as of recently openSUSE does not provide an entry in /etc/hosts
>> >> for mapping a loopback IP address to the local hostname by
>> >> default any more.  This means that now on many desktop boxes the
>> >> local hostname is not resolvable which causes xfce4-session to
>> >> display a scary warning message ("This will prevent Xfce from
>> >> operating correctly."). That specific code apparently hasn't been
>> >> touched in a while, does this still apply and if so, what exactly
>> >> is supposed to break here (the session comes up fine for me if I
>> >> just ignore it)?
>> >> Thanks,
>>
>> Hm, seems strange, a host that cannot resolve "localhost", what is the rational behind this in openSUSE?
>
> Sorry, my description above might have been a bit ambiguous. Of
> course "localhost" is still resolvable, what was removed from the
> desktop install is a line mapping 127.0.0.2 to the hostname given
> during installation.

Ah, right I recognise that... seems like a bug to me indeed... it
complains if the 'hostname' is not present in /etc/hosts. (which is
mostly true when the hostname is automatically assigned) - Like on my
FreeBSD netbook.

The hostname.domain is different depending on the network I plug it
in. - And I won't change the /etc/hosts file every time the domain
changes.

Regards,
Stephan