I'm working with a fresh Debian Squeeze install from Linode, and it looks like hostname behaves differently (from lenny) in a way that makes certain other packages unhappy. Viz:
clements@debian:/tmp/npm$ hostname -A
li228-113.members.linode.com
clements@debian:/tmp/npm$ hostname -f
hostname: Name or service not known
clements@debian:/tmp/npm$
This behavior differs from an older (lenny) installation, where hostname -f does not signal an error. Reading the man page suggests to me that squeeze isn't a big fan of the -f option since machines can have multiple fqdns. That's fine with me, but packages like make-ssl-cert get crabby about it:
Setting up ssl-cert (1.0.28) ...
hostname: Name or service not known
make-ssl-cert: Could not get FQDN, using "debian".
make-ssl-cert: You may want to fix your /etc/hosts and/or DNS setup and run
make-ssl-cert: make-ssl-cert generate-default-snakeoil --force-overwrite
make-ssl-cert: again.
I'm hesitant to edit /etc/hosts; this wasn't required on my lenny VPS, and I have the feeling that it shouldn't be required here either.
Any suggestions greatly appreciated.