gethostname

[Paul Richards <p....@elsevier.co.uk>]

Ok, I'm back in work, there's definately no doubt that gethostname
*IS* part of the BSD compatibility option. I've got all the SunOS 5.5
manuals here in front of me and the Source Code Compatibility manual
explicitly states that this is the case.

I've also checked both 5.4 and 5.5 online manual pages and they're
both the same

.\" @(#)gethostname.3b 1.25 93/09/15 SMI; from SVr4

and both have the Notes section that I previously posted. Just to check
I talked to our sysadmin and he's damn sure it's a BSD compatibility option
and should not be used.

I don't know what manuals you're looking at or what system you have
but there's absolutely no doubt that gethostname is not a base part
of SunOS 5.x, at least not according to Sun's own documents anyway!

(The mount issue I mentioned wasn't relevant, I don't mount my man pages
from anywhere, my workstation has it's own complete OS on it, I just
mount my home space).

Umm, just in case people think this is a private quibble it is relevant
to the Apache group in that we should try and restrict our system calls
to those that are POSIX since we have non-unix platforms that rely on
that. All the Unix systems attempt to be POSIX compatible whether they're
SYSV or BSD based.

-- 
  Paul Richards. Originative Solutions Ltd.  (Netcraft Ltd. contractor)
  Elsevier Science TIS online journal project.
  Email: p.richards@elsevier.co.uk
  Phone: 0370 462071 (Mobile), +44 (0)1865 843155

Re: gethostname

[Frank Peters <fw...@Jester.CC.MsState.Edu>]

On Mon, 25 Mar 1996, Paul Richards wrote:

> Ok, I'm back in work, there's definately no doubt that gethostname
> *IS* part of the BSD compatibility option. I've got all the SunOS 5.5
> manuals here in front of me and the Source Code Compatibility manual
> explicitly states that this is the case.
>
> I've also checked both 5.4 and 5.5 online manual pages and they're
> both the same
>
> .\" @(#)gethostname.3b 1.25 93/09/15 SMI; from SVr4

You certainly have something strange going on but thos aren't the 5.5
manual pages.  The header of /usr/share/man/man3c/gethostname.3c says

  .\" @(#)gethostname.3c 1.27 95/03/03 SMI; from SVr4

Here is a more definitive test:

fwp@Jester ; grep gethostname /var/sadm/install/contents
/opt/SUNWaman/ps/REFMAN3/2748_gethostname.3c f PostScript 0644 bin bin 18598 60961 811967013 SUNWaman
/opt/SUNWaman/ps/REFMAN3/2866_sethostname.3c=./2748_gethostname.3c s PostScript SUNWaman
/usr/share/man/man3c/gethostname.3c f none 0444 bin bin 2036 40689 812339717 *SUNWman

If this command doesn't give any output on your machine then this means
that the man pages weren't actually installed on this machine and must
have been copied in from somewhere else.

Notice that the section is 3c, *not* 3b.  All of this is on a machine that
doesn't NFS mount anything to or from anywhere, that always has the newest
OS release freshly installed (not an upgrade from a previous release) and
that has almost nothing installed on it except the OS release and
compilers.  Just for giggles I checked another 5.5  machine that doesn't
have compilers installed and does have BSD stuff and it has the same
manual page and contents file information (minus the answerbook entries).

I can think of three likely possibilities:

1) Your 2.5 box NFS mounts manual pages from an older system.

2) Your 2.5 box has manual pages that were copied from an older system.

3) Your 2.5 box was upgraded from an older release and somehow the man
   pages didn't get upgraded in the process.

Whatever the cause, you are looking at old man pages.

Re: gethostname

[ra...@madhaus.utcs.utoronto.ca]

> Ok, I'm back in work, there's definately no doubt that gethostname
> *IS* part of the BSD compatibility option. I've got all the SunOS 5.5
> manuals here in front of me and the Source Code Compatibility manual
> explicitly states that this is the case.
> 
> I've also checked both 5.4 and 5.5 online manual pages and they're
> both the same
> 
> .\" @(#)gethostname.3b 1.25 93/09/15 SMI; from SVr4

Look again, you have not installed the new set of man pages from your
Solaris 2.5 CD then.  This is the top of the file right from the man3c
directory on the cd:

.\" @(#)gethostname.3c 1.27 95/03/03 SMI; from SVr4

Note the version number.  I have 1.27 from 1995 and you are looking at
version 1.25 from 1993.  

I repeat, there is *NO* mention of any BSD compatibility on that man
page.  I agree that gethostname has its origins in BSD and at one point
it was in the BSD compatibility library, but this is no longer true for
Solaris.  (And no, there is no man3b/gethostname.3b file on the 
Solaris 2.5 CD - I checked)

> and both have the Notes section that I previously posted. Just to check
> I talked to our sysadmin and he's damn sure it's a BSD compatibility option
> and should not be used.

Well, he's wrong.

Check your SunOS 5.5 distribution CD to verify this for yourself.  Simply
looking at an installed man page won't tell you much since you can't be sure
that the latest OS upgrade also upgraded the man pages.  I have a couple of
virgin Solaris boxes here that have never had anything but Solaris 2.5 on
them and they all have the latest man pages right from the CD.

--
Rasmus Lerdorf
rasmus@madhaus.utcs.utoronto.ca