[erlang-questions] C Node Communication Over Localhost

[John Koenig]

> Can you ping "shadow" while it is associated to the IP 127.0.1.1 ?
> If you've blocked ICMP echo in kernel, enable it temporarily and test.
> If ping works, try to write a small program to do a reverse 
> name-resolution in C and see if it works.

Yes, I can ping shadow (127.0.1.1), just by entering "ping shadow" at 
shadow's command line.

My concern with doing a hostname lookup within C and then binding to 
that address was simply that my design was to have 1 erlang VM 
communicate with 1 C node over a localhost channel.  I was lulling 
myself into a sense of security by not opening up the C node to a 
potentially external IP address.

For example, network manager in Ubuntu 10.10 prepended a line to 
/etc/hosts of the form "<current_ip> <hostname>".  Wouldn't the reverse 
lookup from within C return an address pointing to <current_ip> in this 
case?

John