Bug 13510

Summary: resolv.conf.5 implies that only IPv4 addresses are allowed
Product: Documentation Reporter: Dan Winship (danw)
Component: man-pagesAssignee: documentation_man-pages (documentation_man-pages)
Status: RESOLVED CODE_FIX    
Severity: normal CC: alan, jnerin
Priority: P1    
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
Kernel Version: Subsystem:
Regression: No Bisected commit-id:

Description Dan Winship 2009-06-11 19:45:26 UTC 
resolv.conf.5 says:

   nameserver Name server IP address
      Internet address (in dot notation) of a name server that the resolver
      should query.

Only IPv4 addresses have a "dot notation", so this suggests that IPv6 addresses aren't allowed. But they are.

Given that the "sortlist" field is IPv4-only, it's probably best to actually be explicit that nameserver supports either. So:

   nameserver Name server IP address
      IP address (IPv4 or IPv6) of a name server that the resolver
      should query.
Comment 1 Jorge Nerín 2013-09-10 16:31:31 UTC 
As of man-pages-3.51 resolv.conf.5:

       nameserver Name server IP address
              Internet address of a  name  server  that  the  resolver  should
              query,  either  an  IPv4  address  (in dot notation), or an IPv6
              address in colon (and possibly dot) notation as  per  RFC  2373.

So this bug can be closed.