Re: init_system_name fqdn?

[Tim Cross <theophilusx@gmail.com>]

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I'm not sure what your expected result is? If the system does not have a
fqdn, which is very common, especially with many SOHO users, then what
should it be set to if not hostname?

I do remember years ago when lots of systems assumed/expected a fqdn. To
make things work correctly, you had to define localhost.localdomain as many
systems use a test along the lines of "has at least 2 components in the
domain name".

My current home machine, with a pretty much default Ubuntu setup has a
hostname of tim-desktop. If I use hostname -f it is still tim-desktop
because this machine does not have a fqdn - I don't have a real domain
name, so cannot have a real fqdn. If I did, the system would be configured
accordingly and hostname -f wold return the fqdn.

Is your concern that even when you have a system setup with a fqdn that
emacs is still only using the hostname part i.e. not hostname -f? If so,
yes, this is probably incorrect.

On the other hand, if you are concerned about the fact that if the system
does not have a fqdn, you don't get a 'real' email address (or at least one
which looks real, but may have no MX)? If so, I don't think this is
something emacs can really do much about and at least an obvious 'bad
address' is better as it may alert the user to the problem.

Yes, this does mean that when you do emacs -Q on a system without a fqdn,
and then try to send a bug report, the address is incorrect, but that is
probably the least of your problems. The email is unlikely to be sent  as
the system is unlikely to have a correctly configure MTA. If it does, it
probably should be configured to re-write the from address to be whatever
mailhob/smarthost the system uses anyway.

I recall a number of threads in the past about this issue and suggestions
to do things like change bug reporting to use a web service instead of
relying on email. However, most of these alternative solutions either added
additional complexity or required additional infrastructure which someone
would have to maintain. From memory, managing the additional infrastructure
to provide a web service for bug reports and ensuring it was secure and not
susceptible to spam/abuse was the real issue.

At the end of the day, I don't think being able to send email correctly
from emacs -Q is anything Emacs can reliably solve. However, it isn't a big
issue - I've found it pretty easy to just select the message, copy it into
my mail client and send it that way. From memory, I think there is even
some text in the bug report template warning about this and what to do.




On 17 June 2017 at 04:10, Ken Olum <kdo@cosmos.phy.tufts.edu> wrote:

>    From: Yuri Khan <yuri.v.khan@gmail.com>
>    Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2017 21:33:05 +0700
>
>    > Many systems are configured without a fully qualified hostname.
>
>    Even if they are, they are not likely to be able to receive email at
>    their configured FQDN.
>
> I think the Unix hostname setting has nothing to do with how the system
> is configured on the Internet.  So the fact that hostname is set to
> something with no domain is not relevant to whether users can receive
> mail.
>
>                                         Ken
>
>


-- 
regards,

Tim

--
Tim Cross

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