localhost is empty

harpoon45 · 12-12-2007, 11:00 PM

I have FC6: 2.6.18.8
When i run "echo $localhost"
i get an empty time.
I checked /etc/hosts and it has:

# Do not remove the following line, or various programs
# that require network functionality will fail.
127.0.0.1 localhost localhost

How can I setup the localhost properly???

gilead · 12-12-2007, 11:05 PM

I don't have $localhost set on my system either - that doesn't mean you have it set up wrongly. If you need the variable set for one of your applciations you can export it from (for example) ~/.bash_profile

If that's not what you meant - can you post more info about what you're trying to do please?

harpoon45 · 12-12-2007, 11:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gilead

I don't have $localhost set on my system either - that doesn't mean you have it set up wrongly. If you need the variable set for one of your applciations you can export it from (for example) ~/.bash_profile

If that's not what you meant - can you post more info about what you're trying to do please?

Thanks Gilead
I'm trying to run a ruby application and it fails. From what i read online it said that the problem might be because localhost isn't setup properly
and hence the question

gilead · 12-14-2007, 01:16 PM

The entry you have in /etc/hosts is enough for communicating with the local host. As long as your ruby app is trying to access either localhost or 127.0.0.1 it should be fine - anything else will resolve as a remote host (unless you have DNS entries pointing back to that box). Are you getting a "getaddrinfo" error?

michaelk · 12-14-2007, 02:09 PM

You have not provided enough information. What is the intent of your application? socket programming, HTML etc.

localhost references the network local loopback adapter (lo) i.e. 127.0.0.1 on each TCP/IP computer. In a nutshell lo lets you run network server/client apps on the same computer. For example if running a webserver you can view the default page on the same computer by typing http://localhost in a web browser.

SiegeX · 12-14-2007, 03:50 PM

$localhost is a shell variable, this is not what you want. When you run a network-aware program such as ping,telnet,ssh etc and you provide a *hostname* rather than an IP address, i.e. ping localhost with no '$' in front, it will first try to look at /etc/hosts to see if there is an entry in there to see what the IP address is. If that hostname does not exist in /etc/hosts it will then do a DNS query to see if it can find out what the IP address is.