Re: gethostbyname(my_name) and IL2-Sturmovik

[Peter Åstrand]

On Tue, 13 Dec 2005, Pavel Troller wrote:
> > 127.0.0.1	localhost.localdomain	localhost  	Zwirch
> Yes, I know that *MANY* well-known distros are wrong with /etc/hosts and
> similar files..
> I think that it is NOT GOOD to patch wine to fix this case; it behaves 
> absolutely correctly and all the problem should be solved by correctly 
> configuring your Linux networking. Please see any good document about 
> naming principles of network interfaces.

I haven't followed the whole thread, so sorry if I've missed something 
obvious, but:

I think you are wrong. POSIX does not say that it's wrong to have the 
computer name associated with 127.0.0.1 in /etc/hosts, and it doesn't say 
that gethostbyname(my_name) should return a "real" IP. If I remember 
correctly, though, Microsoft, specifies that gethostbyname(my_name) 
*should* return real IP.

This subtle difference means that Wine must take extra care. Fetching a 
real IP on a UNIX host is not trivial, but doable.

Instead of just fetching the IP by looking up the hostname, I suggest 
using the approach below instead. It will fail if there is no route to 
192.168.1.1 (typically this means that you don't have a default gateway). 
When this happens, you can resolv the hostname as a fallback.

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <sys/socket.h>
#include <netinet/in.h>
#include <arpa/inet.h>

int main()
{
     int s, c, got_sockname = 0;
     struct sockaddr_in serv_addr;
     struct sockaddr_in my_addr;
     char *my_ip;

serv_addr.sin_family = AF_INET;
     serv_addr.sin_port = htons(1);
     /* Even better: Use the server you will connect to */
     inet_aton("192.168.1.1", &serv_addr.sin_addr);

s = socket (PF_INET, SOCK_DGRAM, 0);
     if (s < 0) {
         perror("socket");
         exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
     }

/* connect fails if if server is unreachable, for example */
     if ((c = connect(s, (struct sockaddr*) &serv_addr, sizeof(serv_addr))) >= 0) {
         socklen_t my_addrlen;
         my_addrlen = sizeof(my_addr);
         if (getsockname(s, (struct sockaddr*)&my_addr, &my_addrlen) >= 0) {
             got_sockname = 1;
         }
     }

if (!got_sockname)
         /* Use 127.0.0.1 as a fallback. Even better: Resolv the
            hostname.  */
         inet_aton("127.0.0.1", &my_addr.sin_addr);

my_ip = inet_ntoa(my_addr.sin_addr);
     printf("%s\n", my_ip);

return 0;
}

Regards,