apticron uses in-addr.arpa record instead of hostname

[Curt Sampson]

Since installing Ubuntu 11.10 on my system, apticron has stopped using the hostname in its e-mails and instead is using one of the in-addr.arpa records instead. (The mail claims to come from 219.117.251.198.static.zoot.jp rather than t2.dyadic.cynic.net; the later is the contents of the /etc/hostname file and also the address given for 127.0.0.1 in /etc/hosts. Note that I am in the common case that I have no control over the in-addr.arpa record, as it is delegated to my ISP, not to me. I do potentially have control over the records for other interfaces on the system; it's not clear to me why it would choose this one.)

Apticron should go back to using the canonical hostname from /etc/hosts, rather than picking presumably a random interface and looking up a DNS record from that that may not even be set by the system admin.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
Package: apticron 1.1.49
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0.0-12.20-virtual 3.0.4
Uname: Linux 3.0.0-12-virtual x86_64
ApportVersion: 1.23-0ubuntu3
Architecture: amd64
Date: Mon Oct 31 10:20:14 2011
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en
 LC_COLLATE=C
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: apticron
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to oneiric on 2011-10-27 (3 days ago)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Sebastian Krysmanski (manski)]

Still true for Ubuntu 12.04.1. Especially misleading since /etc/apticron/apticron.conf states:

#
# Set SYSTEM if you would like apticron to use something other than the output
# of "hostname -f" for the system name in the mails it generates
#
# SYSTEM="foobar.example.com"

It seems to use "hostname -A" instead. Also, on one of my systems "hostname -A" returns an empty string, so the hostname is completely missing from the emails in this case.

[Curt Sampson (cjs-cynic)]

I have confirmed that "hostname" in the mail sent by apticron matches the output of "hostname -A", and not that of "hostname -f". ("hostname -f" produces the name it used to use, and that I wish it still used.)

-A seems just wrong here, since it completely ignores the host configuration and uses only information from the DNS, which may not even exist (presumably producing no output), and, when it does exist, is not infrequently not under the control of the host admin.