NetworkManager updates /etc/hosts in a way that breaks "hostname --fqdn"

[Malte Helmert]

Binary package hint: network-manager

Since the upgrade to maverick, my machine doesn't know it's FQDN any more:

$ hostname --fqdn
alfons
$ hostname --all-fqdns
alfons
$ python -c "import socket; print socket.getfqdn()"
localhost6.localdomain6

In all three cases, I'd be expecting the answer "alfons.informatik.uni-freiburg.de" instead, which I got before (with lucid).

I looked around a bit and found out that a change to /etc/hosts by NetworkManager is causing this.
My /etc/hosts looks like this:

    132.230.166.41 alfons # Added by NetworkManager
    127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost
    ::1 alfons localhost6.localdomain6 localhost6

    # The following lines are desirable for IPv6 capable hosts
    ::1 localhost ip6-localhost ip6-loopback
    fe00::0 ip6-localnet
    ff00::0 ip6-mcastprefix
    ff02::1 ip6-allnodes
    ff02::2 ip6-allrouters
    ff02::3 ip6-allhosts

It was modified to look like this by NetworkManager. I tried manually changing it to the following:

    127.0.0.1 localhost

    # The following lines are desirable for IPv6 capable hosts
    ::1 localhost ip6-localhost ip6-loopback
    fe00::0 ip6-localnet
    ff00::0 ip6-mcastprefix
    ff02::1 ip6-allnodes
    ff02::2 ip6-allrouters
    ff02::3 ip6-allhosts

after which I get the expected results:

    $ hostname --fqdn
    alfons.informatik.uni-freiburg.de
    $ hostname --all-fqdn
    alfons.informatik.uni-freiburg.de
    $ python -c "import socket; print socket.getfqdn()"
    alfons.informatik.uni-freiburg.de

But unfortunately after the next reboot (or reconnect to the network), /etc/hosts is changed again and the problem returns.

Questions:
1) Is there any way to keep NetworkManager from doing this?
2) Failing that, is there any way to find out my machine's FQDN despite NetworkManager's behaviour?

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.10
Package: network-manager 0.8.1+git.20100810t184654.ab580f4-0ubuntu2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.35-22.34-generic-pae 2.6.35.4
Uname: Linux 2.6.35-22-generic-pae i686
Architecture: i386
CRDA: Error: [Errno 2] No such file or directory
Date: Wed Oct 20 01:12:24 2010
Gconf:

IfupdownConfig:
 auto lo
 iface lo inet loopback
IpRoute:
 132.230.166.0/24 dev eth0 proto kernel scope link src 132.230.166.41 metric 1
 169.254.0.0/16 dev eth0 scope link metric 1000
 default via 132.230.166.254 dev eth0 proto static
IwConfig:
 lo no wireless extensions.

 eth0 no wireless extensions.
Keyfiles: Error: [Errno 2] No such file or directory
ProcEnviron:
 LC_TIME=de_DE.UTF-8
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
 LC_PAPER=de_DE.UTF-8
RfKill:

SourcePackage: network-manager
WpaSupplicantLog:

[Malte Helmert (helmert)]

Looks like bug 645648 is about the same thing.

Setting /etc/domainname, as suggested there, doesn't make any difference for me.

[Malte Helmert (helmert)]

Dear Giovanni, I don't understand why this is marked as opinion.
What is the other opinion? Should I not expect hostname -f to work?
Maybe I missed a discussion elsewhere?

[Malte Helmert (helmert)]

No reaction? :-(

[Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre (cyphermox)]

Right, this is not the right status for this bug. However, it is indeed the same issue as in bug 645648, so marking this as a duplicate.