[TUHS] Pondering the hosts file

[TUHS] Pondering the hosts file

[Grant Taylor via TUHS]

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Hi,

I'm not sure where this message best fits; TUHS, COFF, or Internet 
History, so please forgive me if this list is not the best location.

I'm discussing the hosts file with someone and was wondering if there's 
any historical documentation around it's format and what should and 
should not be entered in the file.

I've read the current man page on Gentoo Linux, but suspect that it's 
far from authoritative.  I'm hoping that someone can point me to 
something more authoritative to the hosts file's format, guidelines 
around entering data, and how it's supposed to function.

A couple of sticking points in the other discussion revolve around how 
many entries a host is supposed to have in the hosts file and any 
ramifications for having a host appear as an alias on multiple lines / 
entries.  To whit, how correct / incorrect is the following:

192.0.2.1	host.example.net	host
127.0.0.1	localhost	host.example.net	host



-- 
Grant. . . .
unix || die


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Re: [TUHS] [COFF] Pondering the hosts file

[Steffen Nurpmeso]

Grant Taylor wrote in
 <02d10a8e-2f39-4f88-f4c9-ecb295e0f01e@spamtrap.tnetconsulting.net>:
 |Hi,
 |
 |I'm not sure where this message best fits; TUHS, COFF, or Internet 
 |History, so please forgive me if this list is not the best location.
 |
 |I'm discussing the hosts file with someone and was wondering if there's 
 |any historical documentation around it's format and what should and 
 |should not be entered in the file.
 |
 |I've read the current man page on Gentoo Linux, but suspect that it's 
 |far from authoritative.  I'm hoping that someone can point me to 
 |something more authoritative to the hosts file's format, guidelines 
 |around entering data, and how it's supposed to function.
 |
 |A couple of sticking points in the other discussion revolve around how 
 |many entries a host is supposed to have in the hosts file and any 
 |ramifications for having a host appear as an alias on multiple lines / 
 |entries.  To whit, how correct / incorrect is the following:
 |
 |192.0.2.1     host.example.net        host
 |127.0.0.1     localhost       host.example.net        host

Address, "official name", aliases.
And as many as you want i'd say.  It is just that an alias might
be hidden and never be found (if actually hidden).  This is at
least how i interpreted it.

--steffen
|
|Der Kragenbaer,                The moon bear,
|der holt sich munter           he cheerfully and one by one
|einen nach dem anderen runter  wa.ks himself off
|(By Robert Gernhardt)

Re: [TUHS] Pondering the hosts file

[Bakul Shah]

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From https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?hosts(5)
For each host a single line should be present with the following information:

	   Internet address
	   official host name
	   aliases
HISTORY
     The hosts file format appeared in 4.2BSD.
> On Mar 11, 2021, at 9:14 AM, Grant Taylor via TUHS <tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org> wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm not sure where this message best fits; TUHS, COFF, or Internet History, so please forgive me if this list is not the best location.
> 
> I'm discussing the hosts file with someone and was wondering if there's any historical documentation around it's format and what should and should not be entered in the file.
> 
> I've read the current man page on Gentoo Linux, but suspect that it's far from authoritative.  I'm hoping that someone can point me to something more authoritative to the hosts file's format, guidelines around entering data, and how it's supposed to function.
> 
> A couple of sticking points in the other discussion revolve around how many entries a host is supposed to have in the hosts file and any ramifications for having a host appear as an alias on multiple lines / entries.  To whit, how correct / incorrect is the following:
> 
> 192.0.2.1    host.example.net    host
> 127.0.0.1    localhost    host.example.net    host
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Grant. . . .
> unix || die

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Re: [TUHS] [COFF] Pondering the hosts file

[Clem Cole]

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Grant, are you asking about a multi-homed host?

IIRC the original BSD code did the first hit and stop, when looking
something up.  What we sometimes did was give the host an alias :  host-en
for the ethernet and host-pro proteon HW.   Host would be on both lines, so
you wanted to make the first 'host' to be the default.
ᐧ

On Thu, Mar 11, 2021 at 12:13 PM Grant Taylor via COFF <coff@minnie.tuhs.org>
wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I'm not sure where this message best fits; TUHS, COFF, or Internet
> History, so please forgive me if this list is not the best location.
>
> I'm discussing the hosts file with someone and was wondering if there's
> any historical documentation around it's format and what should and
> should not be entered in the file.
>
> I've read the current man page on Gentoo Linux, but suspect that it's
> far from authoritative.  I'm hoping that someone can point me to
> something more authoritative to the hosts file's format, guidelines
> around entering data, and how it's supposed to function.
>
> A couple of sticking points in the other discussion revolve around how
> many entries a host is supposed to have in the hosts file and any
> ramifications for having a host appear as an alias on multiple lines /
> entries.  To whit, how correct / incorrect is the following:
>
> 192.0.2.1       host.example.net        host
> 127.0.0.1       localhost       host.example.net        host
>
>
>
> --
> Grant. . . .
> unix || die
>
> _______________________________________________
> COFF mailing list
> COFF@minnie.tuhs.org
> https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff
>

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Re: [TUHS] [COFF] Pondering the hosts file

[Warner Losh]

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On Thu, Mar 11, 2021 at 10:40 AM Bakul Shah <bakul@iitbombay.org> wrote:

> From https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?hosts(5)
>
> For each host a single line should be present with the following information:
>
> 	   Internet address
> 	   official host name
> 	   aliases
>
> *HISTORY* <https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?hosts(5)#end>
>      The *hosts* file format appeared in 4.2BSD.
>
>
While this is true wrt the history of FreeBSD/Unix, I'm almost positive
that BSD didn't invent it. I'm pretty sure it was picked up from the
existing host file that was published by sri-nic.arpa before DNS.

Warner


> On Mar 11, 2021, at 9:14 AM, Grant Taylor via TUHS <tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I'm not sure where this message best fits; TUHS, COFF, or Internet
> History, so please forgive me if this list is not the best location.
>
> I'm discussing the hosts file with someone and was wondering if there's
> any historical documentation around it's format and what should and should
> not be entered in the file.
>
> I've read the current man page on Gentoo Linux, but suspect that it's far
> from authoritative.  I'm hoping that someone can point me to something more
> authoritative to the hosts file's format, guidelines around entering data,
> and how it's supposed to function.
>
> A couple of sticking points in the other discussion revolve around how
> many entries a host is supposed to have in the hosts file and any
> ramifications for having a host appear as an alias on multiple lines /
> entries.  To whit, how correct / incorrect is the following:
>
> 192.0.2.1    host.example.net    host
> 127.0.0.1    localhost    host.example.net    host
>
>
>
> --
> Grant. . . .
> unix || die
>
> _______________________________________________
> COFF mailing list
> COFF@minnie.tuhs.org
> https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff
>

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Re: [TUHS] [COFF] Pondering the hosts file

[Clem Cole]

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The SRI file was different format.   There was a tool that fetched and
converted from the PDP-10 scheme to the UNIX scheme - gethtable(8) or
something like that.
ᐧ
ᐧ

On Thu, Mar 11, 2021 at 1:08 PM Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com> wrote:

>
>
> On Thu, Mar 11, 2021 at 10:40 AM Bakul Shah <bakul@iitbombay.org> wrote:
>
>> From https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?hosts(5)
>>
>> For each host a single line should be present with the following information:
>>
>> 	   Internet address
>> 	   official host name
>> 	   aliases
>>
>> *HISTORY* <https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?hosts(5)#end>
>>      The *hosts* file format appeared in 4.2BSD.
>>
>>
> While this is true wrt the history of FreeBSD/Unix, I'm almost positive
> that BSD didn't invent it. I'm pretty sure it was picked up from the
> existing host file that was published by sri-nic.arpa before DNS.
>
> Warner
>
>
>> On Mar 11, 2021, at 9:14 AM, Grant Taylor via TUHS <tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
>> wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I'm not sure where this message best fits; TUHS, COFF, or Internet
>> History, so please forgive me if this list is not the best location.
>>
>> I'm discussing the hosts file with someone and was wondering if there's
>> any historical documentation around it's format and what should and should
>> not be entered in the file.
>>
>> I've read the current man page on Gentoo Linux, but suspect that it's far
>> from authoritative.  I'm hoping that someone can point me to something more
>> authoritative to the hosts file's format, guidelines around entering data,
>> and how it's supposed to function.
>>
>> A couple of sticking points in the other discussion revolve around how
>> many entries a host is supposed to have in the hosts file and any
>> ramifications for having a host appear as an alias on multiple lines /
>> entries.  To whit, how correct / incorrect is the following:
>>
>> 192.0.2.1    host.example.net    host
>> 127.0.0.1    localhost    host.example.net    host
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Grant. . . .
>> unix || die
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> COFF mailing list
>> COFF@minnie.tuhs.org
>> https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff
>>
>

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Re: [TUHS] [COFF] Pondering the hosts file

[Henry Bent]

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While this is true wrt the history of FreeBSD/Unix, I'm almost positive
> that BSD didn't invent it. I'm pretty sure it was picked up from the
> existing host file that was published by sri-nic.arpa before DNS.
>
> Warner
>

The CSRG history doesn't seem to have saved the full SCCS history of the
hosts manpage, but it must have appeared sometime around the addition of
ARP support to 4.1BSD - it's not in the 4.1C sources without ARP, but it is
in the sources with it.  That version does indeed mention its origins:

HOSTS(5)                      File Formats Manual
HOSTS(5)



NAME
       hosts - host name data base

DESCRIPTION
       The  hosts  file  contains information regarding the known hosts on
the
       DARPA Internet.  For each host a single line should be present with
the
       following information:

       official host name
       Internet address
       aliases

       Items  are  separated by any number of blanks and/or tab characters.
 A
       ``#'' indicates the beginning of a comment; characters up to the end
of
       the  line  are not interpreted by routines which search the file.
This
       file is normally created from the official host data base maintained
at
       the  Network Information Control Center (NIC), though local changes
may
       be required to bring it up to date regarding unofficial aliases
 and/or
       unknown hosts.

       Network  addresses are specified in the conventional ``.'' notation
us-
       ing the inet_addr() routine from the Internet address manipulation
 li-
       brary,  inet(3).   Host names may contain any printable character
other
       than a field delimiter, newline, or comment character.

FILES
       /etc/hosts

SEE ALSO
       gethostent(3N)

BUGS
       A name server should be used instead of a static file.   A  binary
 in-
       dexed file format should be available for fast access.



                                15 January 1983
HOSTS(5)

-Henry

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Re: [TUHS] [COFF] Pondering the hosts file

[Jaap Akkerhuis]

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The "new" host table format is described in RFC 810 <https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc810 <https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc810> (mentions UNIX) but it goes back to RFC 608 (1974) or so.

	jaap

> On Mar 11, 2021, at 19:12, Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:
> 
> The SRI file was different format.   There was a tool that fetched and converted from the PDP-10 scheme to the UNIX scheme - gethtable(8) or something like that.
> ᐧ
> ᐧ
> 
> On Thu, Mar 11, 2021 at 1:08 PM Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com <mailto:imp@bsdimp.com>> wrote:
> 
> 
> On Thu, Mar 11, 2021 at 10:40 AM Bakul Shah <bakul@iitbombay.org <mailto:bakul@iitbombay.org>> wrote:
> From https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?hosts(5) <https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?hosts(5)>
> For each host a single line should be present with the following information:
> 	   Internet address
> 	   official host name
> 	   aliases
> HISTORY <https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?hosts(5)#end>
>      The hosts file format appeared in 4.2BSD.
> 
> While this is true wrt the history of FreeBSD/Unix, I'm almost positive that BSD didn't invent it. I'm pretty sure it was picked up from the existing host file that was published by sri-nic.arpa before DNS.
> 
> Warner
> 
>> On Mar 11, 2021, at 9:14 AM, Grant Taylor via TUHS <tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org <mailto:tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>> wrote:
>> 
>> Hi,
>> 
>> I'm not sure where this message best fits; TUHS, COFF, or Internet History, so please forgive me if this list is not the best location.
>> 
>> I'm discussing the hosts file with someone and was wondering if there's any historical documentation around it's format and what should and should not be entered in the file.
>> 
>> I've read the current man page on Gentoo Linux, but suspect that it's far from authoritative.  I'm hoping that someone can point me to something more authoritative to the hosts file's format, guidelines around entering data, and how it's supposed to function.
>> 
>> A couple of sticking points in the other discussion revolve around how many entries a host is supposed to have in the hosts file and any ramifications for having a host appear as an alias on multiple lines / entries.  To whit, how correct / incorrect is the following:
>> 
>> 192.0.2.1    host.example.net <http://host.example.net/>    host
>> 127.0.0.1    localhost    host.example.net <http://host.example.net/>    host
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> --
>> Grant. . . .
>> unix || die
>> 
> _______________________________________________
> COFF mailing list
> COFF@minnie.tuhs.org <mailto:COFF@minnie.tuhs.org>
> https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff <https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff>


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Re: [TUHS] [COFF] Pondering the hosts file

[Nelson H. F. Beebe]

The hosts file format definition appears in

	RFC 752: Universal host table
	RFC 810: DoD Internet host table specification
	RFC 952: DoD Internet host table specification

A 1986 hosts.txt file in my PDP-10 archives notes:

; The format for entries is:
;
; NET : NET-ADDR : NETNAME :
; GATEWAY : ADDR, ADDR : NAME : CPUTYPE : OPSYS : PROTOCOLS :
; HOST : ADDR, ALTERNATE-ADDR (if any): HOSTNAME,NICKNAME : CPUTYPE :
;   OPSYS : PROTOCOLS :
;
; Where:
;;  ADDR = internet address in decimal, e.g., 26.0.0.73
;;  CPUTYPE = machine type (PDP-11/70, VAX-11/780, FOONLY-F3, C/30, etc.)
;;  OPSYS = operating system (UNIX, TOPS20, TENEX, ITS, etc.)
;;  PROTOCOLS = transport/service (TCP/TELNET,TCP/FTP, etc.)
;;  : (colon) = field delimiter
;;  :: (2 colons) = null field

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Nelson H. F. Beebe                    Tel: +1 801 581 5254                  -
- University of Utah                    FAX: +1 801 581 4148                  -
- Department of Mathematics, 110 LCB    Internet e-mail: beebe@math.utah.edu  -
- 155 S 1400 E RM 233                       beebe@acm.org  beebe@computer.org -
- Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090, USA    URL: http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/ -
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: [TUHS] [COFF] Pondering the hosts file

[Henry Bent]

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On Thu, 11 Mar 2021 at 13:14, Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:

> The SRI file was different format.   There was a tool that fetched and
> converted from the PDP-10 scheme to the UNIX scheme - gethtable(8) or
> something like that.
> ᐧ
> ᐧ
>

gettable(8) and htable(8):

GETTABLE(8C)

GETTABLE(8C)

NAME
       gettable - get NIC format host tables from a host

SYNOPSIS
       /etc/gettable host

DESCRIPTION
       Gettable is a simple program used to obtain the NIC standard host
tables from a ``nicname'' server.  The indicated host is queried for the
tables.
       The tables, if retrieved, are placed in the file hosts.txt.

       Gettable operates by opening a TCP connection to the port indicated
in the service specification for ``nicname''.  A  request  is  then  made
 for
       ``ALL'' names and the resultant information is placed in the output
file.

       Gettable  is  best  used in conjunction with the htable(8) program
which converts the NIC standard file format to that used by the network
library
       lookup routines.

SEE ALSO
       intro(3N), htable(8)

BUGS
       Should allow requests for only part of the database.

4th Berkeley Distribution                                              4
March 1983
 GETTABLE(8C)


HTABLE(8)                   System Manager's Manual
 HTABLE(8)



NAME
       htable - convert NIC standard format host tables

SYNOPSIS
       /etc/htable file

DESCRIPTION
       Htable  is used to convert host files in the format specified in
Inter-
       net RFC 810 to the format used by the network library routines.
Three
       files  are  created as a result of running htable: hosts, networks,
and
       gateways.  The hosts file is used by  the  gethostent(3N)  routines
 in
       mapping host names to addresses.  The networks file is used by the
get-
       netent(3N) routines in mapping network names to numbers.  The
 gateways
       file  is used by the routing daemon in identifying ``passive''
Internet
       gateways; see routed(8C) for an explanation.

       If any of the files localhosts,  localnetworks,  or  localgateways
 are
       present  in  the current directory, the file's contents is prepended
to
       the output file without interpretation.  This allows sites to
 maintain
       local  aliases and entries which are not normally present in the
master
       database.

       Htable is best used in conjunction with the gettable(8C) program
 which
       retrieves the NIC database from a host.

SEE ALSO
       intro(3N), gettable(8C)

BUGS
       Does not properly calculate the gateways file.



4th Berkeley Distribution        4 March 1983
 HTABLE(8)

-Henry

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Re: [TUHS] [COFF] Pondering the hosts file

[Jan Schaumann]

"Nelson H. F. Beebe" <beebe@math.utah.edu> wrote:
> The hosts file format definition appears in
> 
> 	RFC 752: Universal host table
> 	RFC 810: DoD Internet host table specification
> 	RFC 952: DoD Internet host table specification
> 
> A 1986 hosts.txt file in my PDP-10 archives notes:

The earliest copy of the hosts file I could find was
http://pdp-10.trailing-edge.com/tops20_v6_1_tcpip_installation_tp_ft6/06/new-system/hosts.txt

;GIDNEY::<PAETZOLD.ARPANET>HOSTS.TXT.5, 27-Mar-85 13:11:54, Edit by PAETZOLD
;GIDNEY::<PAETZOLD.ARPANET>HOSTS.TXT.4, 25-Mar-85 13:56:55, Edit by PAETZOLD
;local stuff

; DoD Internet Host Table
;  22-Mar-85
;  Version number 436

Does anybody have an earlier copy?

-Jan

Re: [TUHS] [COFF] Pondering the hosts file

[Henry Bent]

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On Thu, Mar 11, 2021, 15:12 Jan Schaumann <jschauma@netmeister.org> wrote:

> "Nelson H. F. Beebe" <beebe@math.utah.edu> wrote:
> > The hosts file format definition appears in
> >
> >       RFC 752: Universal host table
> >       RFC 810: DoD Internet host table specification
> >       RFC 952: DoD Internet host table specification
> >
> > A 1986 hosts.txt file in my PDP-10 archives notes:
>
> The earliest copy of the hosts file I could find was
>
> http://pdp-10.trailing-edge.com/tops20_v6_1_tcpip_installation_tp_ft6/06/new-system/hosts.txt
>
> ;GIDNEY::<PAETZOLD.ARPANET>HOSTS.TXT.5, 27-Mar-85 13:11:54, Edit by
> PAETZOLD
> ;GIDNEY::<PAETZOLD.ARPANET>HOSTS.TXT.4, 25-Mar-85 13:56:55, Edit by
> PAETZOLD
> ;local stuff
>
> ; DoD Internet Host Table
> ;  22-Mar-85
> ;  Version number 436
>
> Does anybody have an earlier copy?
>
> -Jan


This was in the first page of Google search results for "DoD Internet Host
Table"; I bet with a little more research I could come up with something
much older.  Or one of the PDP-10 folks will find the original...

https://emaillab.jp/dns/hosts/

-Henry

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Re: [TUHS] [COFF] Pondering the hosts file

[Ron Natalie]

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Which hosts table?  The Berkeley one or the REAL internet one?

The Berkeley one (which I think may predate the IP implementation) is 
the one that we know as /etc/hosts that has the address then the namees 
of the hosts.

The "real" one is the one the NIC put out in the pre-domain days.    
It's defined in RFC 952,  looks like

HOST : 10.0.0.29 : BRL.ARPA, BRL : PDP-11/70 : UNIX : TCP :

There was also a simple TCP service that would serve up the file.

I detested the Berkeley one and we always downloaded and used the NIC 
table on our machines.  I rewrote "rhost" and it's successors 
(gethostbyname, etc...) to read directly from the NIC format.

Amusingly one day we got an Imagen ethernet-connected laser printer.    
Mike Muuss decided the thing should be named BRL-ZAP and since I didn't 
know what to put down as the machine type, and it did have a 68000 in 
it, I had Jake put 68000 in the entry in the host table.

The next day I got all kinds of hate mail from other BSD sites who 
assumed I had intentionally sabotaged the host table.   Apparently, the 
BSD systems used a YACC grammar to parse the NIC table into the Berkeley 
one.   The only problem is they got the grammar wrong and assumed the 
CPU type always began with a letter.    There parse blew up on my "ZAP" 
host and they assumed that was the desired effect.

I countered back that using a YACC grammar for this was rediculous.   
There was already a real popular file on UNIX that had a bunch of fields 
separated by colons and commas (/etc/passwd anybody) that it was never 
necessary to use YACC to parse.

-Ron

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Re: [TUHS] [COFF] Pondering the hosts file

[Henry Bent]

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On Thu, 11 Mar 2021 at 15:30, Henry Bent <henry.r.bent@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Mar 11, 2021, 15:12 Jan Schaumann <jschauma@netmeister.org> wrote:
>
>> "Nelson H. F. Beebe" <beebe@math.utah.edu> wrote:
>> > The hosts file format definition appears in
>> >
>> >       RFC 752: Universal host table
>> >       RFC 810: DoD Internet host table specification
>> >       RFC 952: DoD Internet host table specification
>> >
>> > A 1986 hosts.txt file in my PDP-10 archives notes:
>>
>> The earliest copy of the hosts file I could find was
>>
>> http://pdp-10.trailing-edge.com/tops20_v6_1_tcpip_installation_tp_ft6/06/new-system/hosts.txt
>>
>> ;GIDNEY::<PAETZOLD.ARPANET>HOSTS.TXT.5, 27-Mar-85 13:11:54, Edit by
>> PAETZOLD
>> ;GIDNEY::<PAETZOLD.ARPANET>HOSTS.TXT.4, 25-Mar-85 13:56:55, Edit by
>> PAETZOLD
>> ;local stuff
>>
>> ; DoD Internet Host Table
>> ;  22-Mar-85
>> ;  Version number 436
>>
>> Does anybody have an earlier copy?
>>
>> -Jan
>
>
> This was in the first page of Google search results for "DoD Internet Host
> Table"; I bet with a little more research I could come up with something
> much older.  Or one of the PDP-10 folks will find the original...
>
> https://emaillab.jp/dns/hosts/
>
> -Henry
>

Perhaps a more interesting question, and one which I cannot quickly answer
(nor am I going to go pinging huge swaths of the public internet), is are
there any hosts in any version of HOSTS.TXT that are still on the public
internet in the same location?  Or - and perhaps there is an easy answer to
this that I do not know - is there a repository of old WHOIS databases?  I
remember being stymied ~20 years ago that Ultrix had SRI-NIC.ARPA hardcoded
in the whois binary and I couldn't find a hostname of the correct length
with which to replace it...

-Henry

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Re: [TUHS] [COFF] Pondering the hosts file

[Lars Brinkhoff]

Jan Schaumann wrote:
> The earliest copy of the hosts file I could find was
> http://pdp-10.trailing-edge.com/tops20_v6_1_tcpip_installation_tp_ft6/06/new-system/hosts.txt
> ;  22-Mar-85
> Does anybody have an earlier copy?

MIT and Stanford PDP-10 archives have various HOSTS files going back to
the mid 1970s.

Re: [TUHS] [COFF] Pondering the hosts file

[Bakul Shah]

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On Mar 11, 2021, at 12:32 PM, Ron Natalie <ron@ronnatalie.com> wrote:
> 
> Amusingly one day we got an Imagen ethernet-connected laser printer.    Mike Muuss decided the thing should be named BRL-ZAP and since I didn't know what to put down as the machine type, and it did have a 68000 in it, I had Jake put 68000 in the entry in the host table.
> 
> The next day I got all kinds of hate mail from other BSD sites who assumed I had intentionally sabotaged the host table.   Apparently, the BSD systems used a YACC grammar to parse the NIC table into the Berkeley one.   The only problem is they got the grammar wrong and assumed the CPU type always began with a letter.    There parse blew up on my "ZAP" host and they assumed that was the desired effect.

This is understandable as
a) All the "official machine names" in various assigned numbers RFCs start with a letter.
b) the BNF syntax for the "host table specification" entries in RFC 952 or 810 are not precise enough.
	<cputype> ::= PDP-11/70 | DEC-1080 | C/30 | CDC-6400...etc.

NOTE:  See "Assigned Numbers" for specific options and acronyms
         for machine types, operating systems, and protocol/services.
         for machine types, operating systems, and protocol/services.
c) 68000 was not an official name!
:-) :-) :-)

> I countered back that using a YACC grammar for this was rediculous.   There was already a real popular file on UNIX that had a bunch of fields separated by colons and commas (/etc/passwd anybody) that it was never necessary to use YACC to parse.

Can't argue with that! Though that doesn't mean a handwritten parser wouldn't have complained about 68000.


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Re: [TUHS] [COFF] Pondering the hosts file

[Henry Bent]

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On Thu, 11 Mar 2021 at 16:02, Lars Brinkhoff <lars@nocrew.org> wrote:

> Jan Schaumann wrote:
> > The earliest copy of the hosts file I could find was
> >
> http://pdp-10.trailing-edge.com/tops20_v6_1_tcpip_installation_tp_ft6/06/new-system/hosts.txt
> > ;  22-Mar-85
> > Does anybody have an earlier copy?
>
> MIT and Stanford PDP-10 archives have various HOSTS files going back to
> the mid 1970s.
>

Links?  I have not the slightest idea where to start looking for those
archives, nor would I know where to look on the filesystem even if I did
find them.

-Henry

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Re: [TUHS] [COFF] Pondering the hosts file

[Ron Natalie]

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The "name" in this context the host/network/gateway name such as 
SRI-NIC.ARPA.    3COM.COM would not have been legal back then.
Nowhere does it imply that any of the other fields are so restricted.

------ Original Message ------
From: "Bakul Shah" <bakul@iitbombay.org>
To: "Ron Natalie" <ron@ronnatalie.com>
Cc: "The Unix Heritage Society" <tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>; "Internet 
History" <internet-history@postel.org>
Sent: 3/11/2021 4:02:50 PM
Subject: Re: [TUHS] [COFF] Pondering the hosts file

>On Mar 11, 2021, at 12:32 PM, Ron Natalie <ron@ronnatalie.com> wrote:
>>
>>Amusingly one day we got an Imagen ethernet-connected laser printer.   
>>  Mike Muuss decided the thing should be named BRL-ZAP and since I 
>>didn't know what to put down as the machine type, and it did have a 
>>68000 in it, I had Jake put 68000 in the entry in the host table.
>>
>>The next day I got all kinds of hate mail from other BSD sites who 
>>assumed I had intentionally sabotaged the host table.   Apparently, 
>>the BSD systems used a YACC grammar to parse the NIC table into the 
>>Berkeley one.   The only problem is they got the grammar wrong and 
>>assumed the CPU type always began with a letter.    There parse blew 
>>up on my "ZAP" host and they assumed that was the desired effect.
>
>This is understandable as
>a) All the "official machine names" in various assigned numbers RFCs 
>start with a letter.
>b) the BNF syntax for the "host table specification" entries in RFC 952 
>or 810 are not precise enough.
>><cputype> ::= PDP-11/70 | DEC-1080 | C/30 | CDC-6400...etc.
>>
>>NOTE:  See "Assigned Numbers" for specific options and acronyms
>>          for machine types, operating systems, and protocol/services.
>>
>>          for machine types, operating systems, and protocol/services.
>>
>c) 68000 was not an official name!
>:-) :-) :-)
>
>>I countered back that using a YACC grammar for this was rediculous.   
>>There was already a real popular file on UNIX that had a bunch of 
>>fields separated by colons and commas (/etc/passwd anybody) that it 
>>was never necessary to use YACC to parse.
>
>Can't argue with that! Though that doesn't mean a handwritten parser 
>wouldn't have complained about 68000.
>

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Re: [TUHS] [COFF] Pondering the hosts file

[Ron Natalie]

Ah, that brings back memories.   It was after we got our own "private" 
imps at BRL.

The BRL hosts of the day had the name BRL-XNNN where the X was the name 
of the division
V - Vulnerability/Lethality Division
S - Systems Engineering and Concepts Analysis Division
T - Terminal Ballistics Division
I - Interior Ballistics Division
L - Launch and Flight Division.

B appears becvaues SECAD was the Ballistic Modelling Division earlier.

Mike wanted to callel BRL-SEM (the SECAD Experimental Machine) BRL-SEX 
originally.
Jake Fienler at the NIC refused to accept it.

Re: [TUHS] [COFF] Pondering the hosts file

[Bakul Shah]

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As I quoted, the RFC says to refer to the assigned numbers RFC for specific options and acronyms for machine types, operating systems, and protocol/services. A host/network/gateway name has no such restriction. 

> On Mar 11, 2021, at 1:08 PM, Ron Natalie <ron@ronnatalie.com> wrote:
> 
> The "name" in this context the host/network/gateway name such as SRI-NIC.ARPA.    3COM.COM <http://3com.com/> would not have been legal back then.
> Nowhere does it imply that any of the other fields are so restricted.
> 
> ------ Original Message ------
> From: "Bakul Shah" <bakul@iitbombay.org <mailto:bakul@iitbombay.org>>
> To: "Ron Natalie" <ron@ronnatalie.com <mailto:ron@ronnatalie.com>>
> Cc: "The Unix Heritage Society" <tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org <mailto:tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>>; "Internet History" <internet-history@postel.org <mailto:internet-history@postel.org>>
> Sent: 3/11/2021 4:02:50 PM
> Subject: Re: [TUHS] [COFF] Pondering the hosts file
> 
>> On Mar 11, 2021, at 12:32 PM, Ron Natalie <ron@ronnatalie.com <mailto:ron@ronnatalie.com>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Amusingly one day we got an Imagen ethernet-connected laser printer.    Mike Muuss decided the thing should be named BRL-ZAP and since I didn't know what to put down as the machine type, and it did have a 68000 in it, I had Jake put 68000 in the entry in the host table.
>>> 
>>> The next day I got all kinds of hate mail from other BSD sites who assumed I had intentionally sabotaged the host table.   Apparently, the BSD systems used a YACC grammar to parse the NIC table into the Berkeley one.   The only problem is they got the grammar wrong and assumed the CPU type always began with a letter.    There parse blew up on my "ZAP" host and they assumed that was the desired effect.
>> 
>> This is understandable as
>> a) All the "official machine names" in various assigned numbers RFCs start with a letter.
>> b) the BNF syntax for the "host table specification" entries in RFC 952 or 810 are not precise enough.
>> 	<cputype> ::= PDP-11/70 | DEC-1080 | C/30 | CDC-6400...etc.
>> 
>> NOTE:  See "Assigned Numbers" for specific options and acronyms
>>          for machine types, operating systems, and protocol/services.
>>          for machine types, operating systems, and protocol/services.
>> c) 68000 was not an official name!
>> :-) :-) :-)
>> 
>>> I countered back that using a YACC grammar for this was rediculous.   There was already a real popular file on UNIX that had a bunch of fields separated by colons and commas (/etc/passwd anybody) that it was never necessary to use YACC to parse.
>> 
>> Can't argue with that! Though that doesn't mean a handwritten parser wouldn't have complained about 68000.


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Re: [TUHS] [COFF] Pondering the hosts file

[Grant Taylor via TUHS]

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Cross-posting to TUHS my original response to COFF.

On 3/11/21 11:02 AM, Clem Cole wrote:
> Grant, are you asking about a multi-homed host?

I had specifically elided multi-homing for simplicity.

> IIRC the original BSD code did the first hit and stop, when looking 
> something up.

*nod*

That's my understanding.

> What we sometimes did was give the host an alias : host-en for the 
> ethernet and host-pro proteon HW.

If I understand what you're saying:

192.0.2.1	host.example.net	host-en
198.51.100.1	host.example.net	host-pro

> Host would be on both lines, so you wanted to make the first 'host' 
> to be the default.

I guess I shouldn't elide multi-homing and instead address it directly. 
   Or at least clarify the paradigm.

Should a given host name appear on more than one entry / line in the 
hosts file if it's only got one IP (other than 127.0.0.1 / ::1)?





-- 
Grant. . . .
unix || die


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Re: [TUHS] [COFF] Pondering the hosts file

[Henry Bent]

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> Perhaps a more interesting question, and one which I cannot quickly answer
> (nor am I going to go pinging huge swaths of the public internet), is are
> there any hosts in any version of HOSTS.TXT that are still on the public
> internet in the same location?  Or - and perhaps there is an easy answer to
> this that I do not know - is there a repository of old WHOIS databases?  I
> remember being stymied ~20 years ago that Ultrix had SRI-NIC.ARPA hardcoded
> in the whois binary and I couldn't find a hostname of the correct length
> with which to replace it...
>
> -Henry
>

A quick flash of inspiration revealed a partial answer to this.
tick.usno.navy.mil and tock.usno.navy.mil have been 192.5.41.40 and
192.5.41.41 since 1994:
https://groups.google.com/g/news.test/c/VGw06jeo2Zk/m/1oi8rsKVxrQJ .  I've
been relying on these for almost as long as they've been online.
Unfortunately they do not show up in the 1995 HOSTS.TXT file.

-Henry

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Re: [TUHS] [COFF] Pondering the hosts file

[Jeremy C. Reed]

On Thu, 11 Mar 2021, Jan Schaumann wrote:
> ; DoD Internet Host Table
> ;  22-Mar-85
> ;  Version number 436
> 
> Does anybody have an earlier copy?

See the collection at
https://github.com/ttkzw/hosts.txt/
(but not all are in the same format)

Re: [TUHS] [COFF] Pondering the hosts file

[Richard Salz]

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> Perhaps a more interesting question, and one which I cannot quickly answer
> (nor am I going to go pinging huge swaths of the public internet), is are
> there any hosts in any version of HOSTS.TXT that are still on the public
> internet in the same location?
>

Hard to answer the question.  Same physical location?  Same hardware?
mit-prep.arpa is prep.ai.mit.edu which is a CNAME to ftp.gnu.org  Theseus's
ship?

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Re: [TUHS] [COFF] Pondering the hosts file

[Mary Ann Horton]

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3com.com was indeed illegal initially. We (the UUCP Zone) went to 
register it with the NIC and were told leading zeros weren't allowed, 
because some code might think a leading digit meant an IP address. I 
pushed back, they relented, and it was registered without a problem.

On 3/11/21 1:08 PM, Ron Natalie wrote:
> The "name" in this context the host/network/gateway name such as 
> SRI-NIC.ARPA.    3COM.COM would not have been legal back then.
> Nowhere does it imply that any of the other fields are so restricted.
>
> ------ Original Message ------
> From: "Bakul Shah" <bakul@iitbombay.org <mailto:bakul@iitbombay.org>>
> To: "Ron Natalie" <ron@ronnatalie.com <mailto:ron@ronnatalie.com>>
> Cc: "The Unix Heritage Society" <tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org 
> <mailto:tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>>; "Internet History" 
> <internet-history@postel.org <mailto:internet-history@postel.org>>
> Sent: 3/11/2021 4:02:50 PM
> Subject: Re: [TUHS] [COFF] Pondering the hosts file
>
>> On Mar 11, 2021, at 12:32 PM, Ron Natalie <ron@ronnatalie.com 
>> <mailto:ron@ronnatalie.com>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Amusingly one day we got an Imagen ethernet-connected laser 
>>> printer.    Mike Muuss decided the thing should be named BRL-ZAP and 
>>> since I didn't know what to put down as the machine type, and it did 
>>> have a 68000 in it, I had Jake put 68000 in the entry in the host table.
>>>
>>> The next day I got all kinds of hate mail from other BSD sites who 
>>> assumed I had intentionally sabotaged the host table.  Apparently, 
>>> the BSD systems used a YACC grammar to parse the NIC table into the 
>>> Berkeley one.   The only problem is they got the grammar wrong and 
>>> assumed the CPU type always began with a letter.    There parse blew 
>>> up on my "ZAP" host and they assumed that was the desired effect.
>>
>> This is understandable as
>> a) All the "official machine names" in various assigned numbers RFCs 
>> start with a letter.
>> b) the BNF syntax for the "host table specification" entries in RFC 
>> 952 or 810 are not precise enough.
>>
>>     <cputype> ::= PDP-11/70 | DEC-1080 | C/30 | CDC-6400...etc.
>>
>>     NOTE:  See "Assigned Numbers" for specific options and acronyms
>>               for machine types, operating systems, and protocol/services.
>>
>>               for machine types, operating systems, and protocol/services.
>>
>> c) 68000 was not an official name!
>> :-) :-) :-)
>>
>>> I countered back that using a YACC grammar for this was rediculous. 
>>>  There was already a real popular file on UNIX that had a bunch of 
>>> fields separated by colons and commas (/etc/passwd anybody) that it 
>>> was never necessary to use YACC to parse.
>>
>> Can't argue with that! Though that doesn't mean a handwritten parser 
>> wouldn't have complained about 68000.
>>

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Re: [TUHS] [COFF] Pondering the hosts file

[Jeremy C. Reed]

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(I re-added Internet History list to my response here ...)
On Thu, 11 Mar 2021, Henry Bent wrote:

> Perhaps a more interesting question, and one which I cannot quickly answer
> (nor am I going to go pinging huge swaths of the public internet), is are
> there any hosts in any version of HOSTS.TXT that are still on the public
> internet in the same location?  Or - and perhaps there is an easy answer to
> this that I do not know - is there a repository of old WHOIS databases?  I
> remember being stymied ~20 years ago that Ultrix had SRI-NIC.ARPA hardcoded
> in the whois binary and I couldn't find a hostname of the correct length
> with which to replace it...

Using 1988 SRI-NIC host table
https://github.com/ttkzw/hosts.txt/blob/master/pub/hosts/19881208/HOSTS.TXT

I don't know if at same location, but some relationship and even some 
same or close names:

CS.WISC.EDU 128.105.2.6

128.135.0.0 u-chicago.uchicago.edu.

uvaarpa.virginia.edu. uvaarpa-old.virginia.edu.  128.143.2.7

jellicoe.cs.ucl.ac.uk. 128.16.3.1

honda.cs.columbia.edu. 128.59.16.16

cesd-gw.ai.sri.com. 192.12.33.1

ns0.llnl.gov. 192.12.17.1

umbc-net.umbc.edu. 130.85.0.0

net.queensu.ca.  130.15.0.0

ns.indiana.edu. 129.79.1.1

oswego-net.oswego.edu.  129.3.0.0

dorm-net0.stanford.edu. 128.12.0.0

nas-net.nas.nasa.gov. 129.99.0.0

Several others at same organizations or descendants. A lot are under 
xip.io.

Re: [TUHS] [COFF] Pondering the hosts file

[George Michaelson]

Funny story about /etc/hosts. and HOSTS.TXT. It was SRI NIC or NIC
DDN/MIL's job to maintain and distribute. Centrex model to keep the
numbers up, and hostnames aligned. We did shell ftp fetches and local
distribution. Yellow pages was a godsend in mant ways, the operations
duty cycle to keep this stuff up to date was a bit of a PITA.

Enter yourself in HOSTS.TXT. It was sorted. Often, Alpha. So people
like BBN were up top. People like MIT were midway. UCL-CS was down
low. Oh well. Good thing we don't do linear lookup.. Or it was sorted
by IP. But, somehow no matter what sort, we were down the back. Some
things basically seemed to to linear. And, as the host count rose, be
it sorted by IP or sorted by name, hosts in UCL-CS seemed to be
"bottom" for finding. Bottom in time sense.

So: you try to telnet to a US node, (or FTP) -and it dies. BBN
butterfly has LRUd you out. You get that fixed. That takes time too.
Hopefully less often. Shame BBN was on a fixed price fixed term
contract and the EGP (pre BGP) was not patchable. Things come back
eventually.

You try to telnet to a node again. You get connected. Long pause. you
get login: prompt. Long pause. You start typing login.. it drops link.

Getty/login had a 30 second timer. We were sitting on 29-31 seconds
lookup delay to resolve the client IP, to assert the login prompt.
Sucked to be us.

-G

Re: [TUHS] [COFF] Pondering the hosts file

[Lars Brinkhoff]

Henry Bent wrote:
>  MIT and Stanford PDP-10 archives have various HOSTS files going back
>  to the mid 1970s.
>
> Links?  I have not the slightest idea where to start looking for those
> archives

Hopefully they will be more accessible in the future.  For now, here's a
link to the oldest 1977 copy of HOSTS.TXT in Mark Cripin's directory on
the SAIL PDP-10:

https://www.saildart.org/HOSTS.TXT[NET,MRC]1

Re: [TUHS] [COFF] Pondering the hosts file

[Paul Ruizendaal via TUHS]

BBN’s TCP implementation contained something akin to the hosts file, called hostmap there:
https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=BBN-Vax-TCP/doc

I have not looked at the code for a while, but if I remember correctly the BBN kernel code also read in this file (pre-processed into a binary form) to build its internal routing table.

I do not recall having seen an equivalent file with UoI's NCP Unix in any of the surviving docs or sources - but that does not exclude a library having existed to do lookups in a local copy the SRI-NIC host file. In fact there is some evidence for that in the 2.9 BSD source.

The only surviving copy of the 4.1a (network) source code that I know is in the back-port of this code to 2.8/2.9 BSD. This code includes #ifdef’ed code for accessing the SRI-NIC online host table via NCP:
https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=2.9BSD/usr/net/local

This source also contains tools to convert the SRI-NIC data into - inter alia - a hosts file:
https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=2.9BSD/usr/net/man/man8/htable.8
https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=2.9BSD/usr/net/man/man8/gettable.8c

It would seem that the modern host.txt on Unix evolved late ’81 (BBN code) to early ’82 (4.1a BSD). Possibly NCP Unix has prior work.

Paul

Re: [TUHS] [COFF] Pondering the hosts file

[Bakul Shah]

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On Mar 11, 2021, at 10:08 AM, Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com> wrote:
> 
> On Thu, Mar 11, 2021 at 10:40 AM Bakul Shah <bakul@iitbombay.org> wrote:
>> From https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?hosts(5)
>> For each host a single line should be present with the following information:
>> 	   Internet address
>> 	   official host name
>> 	   aliases
>> HISTORY
>>      The hosts file format appeared in 4.2BSD.
> 
> While this is true wrt the history of FreeBSD/Unix, I'm almost positive that BSD didn't invent it. I'm pretty sure it was picked up from the existing host file that was published by sri-nic.arpa before DNS.

A different and more verbose format. See RFCs 810 & 952. Possibly because it had to serve more purposes?

> Warner
>  
>>> On Mar 11, 2021, at 9:14 AM, Grant Taylor via TUHS <tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org> wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>> 
>>> I'm not sure where this message best fits; TUHS, COFF, or Internet History, so please forgive me if this list is not the best location.
>>> 
>>> I'm discussing the hosts file with someone and was wondering if there's any historical documentation around it's format and what should and should not be entered in the file.
>>> 
>>> I've read the current man page on Gentoo Linux, but suspect that it's far from authoritative.  I'm hoping that someone can point me to something more authoritative to the hosts file's format, guidelines around entering data, and how it's supposed to function.
>>> 
>>> A couple of sticking points in the other discussion revolve around how many entries a host is supposed to have in the hosts file and any ramifications for having a host appear as an alias on multiple lines / entries.  To whit, how correct / incorrect is the following:
>>> 
>>> 192.0.2.1    host.example.net    host
>>> 127.0.0.1    localhost    host.example.net    host
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> -- 
>>> Grant. . . .
>>> unix || die
>> _______________________________________________
>> COFF mailing list
>> COFF@minnie.tuhs.org
>> https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff

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