[Hostname-devel] Bug#568889: manpages: hostname(1) manpage is poorly written

[Ben Wong]

> For your information, you can use reportbug with path to a file as argument, it
> will check the owner packgage.
>
> $ dpkg -S hostname.1
> hostname: /usr/share/man/man1/hostname.1.gz

Did I misfile this bug? My apologies.

>> More likely, the author meant that using 'hostname' is not the
>> *correct* way to change the domain name and that using it that way
>> might cause random breakage.
>>
>> There are many tutorials on the Internet which actually tell people to
>> do the opposite, by putting the FQDN in /etc/hostname.  I believe the
>> man page is correct and the tutorials are incorrect, but the man page
>> should explain why it's wrong and how to correctly set the FQDN.
>
> IMO, you should provide hostname maintainers the rationale why FQDN in
> /etc/hostname is bad.

Unfortunately, I do not know the rationale for why the man page was
written that way. I notice that the man page has been updated since I
reported the bug (nearly three years ago) with a footnote that
"nowadays most software is able to cope with a full FQDN" in
/etc/hostname. So I guess that point is rendered moot.

However, I hope the rest of my suggestions (and patch) will be found
useful by you.

--Ben