How to stop Network Manager (I asssume) overwriting /etc/hosts in 10.10?

[Tom H]

On Sun, Mar 20, 2011 at 3:04 PM, Chris G <cl at isbd.net> wrote:
>
> I have just upgraded from xubuntu 10.04 to xubuntu 10.10 but I think my
> problem is also in ubuntu 10.10.
>
> Network Manager (I assume) is overwriting my /etc/hosts file every time
> I reboot my system.  My /etc/hosts file is:-
>
>    127.0.0.1       localhost
>
> ... but Network Manager (or someone) insists on changing it to:-
>
>    127.0.0.1       chris   localhost.localdomain   localhost
>
> Even if I make /etc/hosts read only by setting the permissions it
> *still* gets changed!
>
> This is totally broken for me because I have a proper domain for my
> machine and another machine on my LAN provides DHCP and DNS services
> including the domain name. With the above Network Manager changes I no
> longer have a valid domain and both apache2 and leafnode (among others)
> complain about my system not having a valid domain until I remove the
> above changes and restore my (simpler and more correct) /etc/hosts.

I find it surprising that "chris" is added to the "127.0.0.1" line.
The debian developers has many "discussions" in this respect and
decided to have a "127.0.1.1" line for the hostname of a dhclient box.

I have a 10.10 install where NM prepends a line within "/etc/hosts"

<begin>
dhcp_ip_address hostname # Added by NM
127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain
127.0.1.1 hostname
</end>

Change "/etc/hosts" to

<begin>
127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.1.1 chris.yourdomain chris
</end>

to check whether it's mis-edited.

What's "cat /etc/hostname"?

Is it "chris"? Does changing it to "chris.yourdomain" resolve your problem?