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lotyrin | karma 2223 | avg karma 2.91 · 2015-02-14 06:49:53+00:00

That would account for the case where my local machine doesn't have a host entry for "localhost" but would break if I don't have an IPV4 loopback (if, say, I only have a IPV6 one).

Both of those are pretty odd cases, so I'm not sure how much they're worth worrying about.

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eropple | karma 27047 | avg karma 2.87 · 2015-02-14 07:08:10+00:00

I could be wrong, because networking is Not My Thing At All, Oh God, Make The Pain Stop, Why Does The Routing Table Have Bees In It, but shouldn't 127.0.0.0/8 be able to find the IPv6 loopback if the IPv4 one does not exist? Or am I misunderstanding yet another part of networking?

lotyrin | karma 2223 | avg karma 2.91 · 2015-02-14 07:17:00+00:00

Nope, perfectly possible to not have an IPV4 address.

  $ sudo ifconfig lo 0
  $ ifconfig lo
  lo        Link encap:Local Loopback
            inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
            UP LOOPBACK RUNNING [... the rest omitted for brevity]
  $ ping 127.0.0.1
  PING 127.0.0.1 (127.0.0.1) 56(84) bytes of data.
  ^C
  --- 127.0.0.1 ping statistics ---
  32 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss

eropple | karma 27047 | avg karma 2.87 · 2015-02-14 07:18:34+00:00

Interesting. I guess I assumed it'd tack a bunch of zeroes on the front and try it as an IPv6 address. Thanks!