[Mailman-Developers] hostname -s

[Systems Support]

Hmm, 

It turns out that "hostname -s" does very different things on linux and solaris hosts. On linux, it harmlessly reports the hostname, without qualifying it. On solaris, it silently changes the host name to "-s". This seems to cause Mailman to start throwing away mail, with error messages like " Low level smtp error: (8, 'node name or service name not known'), msgid: xxxx"

Now, this difference in behaviour, between harmless and bizarre, is the stuff of the Unix-haters' handbook http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/unix-haters/preface.html

However, It seems to me pretty disastrous that Mailman should throw away mail just because its own hostname changed.

-- 
Ian Eiloart
Postmaster, University of Sussex
+44 (0) 1273 87-3148