Disable hostname lookups, Good or Bad?

[~DS~]

I want to try out 1.1.11 and every time I go to my url it brings out a error

Database Error: MySQL server has gone away
File: /home/user/public_html/demo/Sources/Security.php
Line: 279

This is really annoying and pray you login as admin, once I login, I ran to disable hostname lookups and quest what? it works and load super fast. No more "Database Error: MySQL server has gone away" error but my question is...is it safe to leave it disabled? I know this will make banning less effective. But what does that mean? How effective?

[Kenny01]

It's good, you can still ban with IP, usernames, emails etc...

[青山 素子]

What you'll lose by disabling is the ability to ban by the reverse IP address (such as banning all comcast.net IPs). That's it, really.

[~DS~]

What you'll lose by disabling is the ability to ban by the reverse IP address (such as banning all comcast.net IPs). That's it, really.

Ummm...if you were me you wouldn't mind disabling it?

[Kill Em All]

MySQL has gone away / Lost connection to server during query

[~DS~]

MySQL has gone away / Lost connection to server during query

Yes, I read before posting this. Thank you.

[Kill Em All]

Never know.

Going off of what Motoko-chan, I would say yes, its pretty safe to disable it. If I was having problems and that solved it, I wouldn't be to worried. How often to you get spammers.

[青山 素子]

SMF keeps the MySQL connection open when doing reverse lookups. Badly-configured DNS servers at a host can cause the MySQL connection to timeout, and sometimes will expose a configuration issue where the connection won't re-open.

Losing the RDNS functionality will offer a little less in the way of banning options, but I don't know too many people who ban on RDNS, so it's not a huge concern.