Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2005 18:08:53 -0400 From: Aaron Peterson <dopplecoder@gmail.com> To: "Gary W. Swearingen" <garys@opusnet.com> Cc: "freebsd-questions@freebsd.org" <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: Change of FQDN Message-ID: <45d750d20507181508440b34b3@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <ybslybhivy.lyb@mail.opusnet.com> References: <1121706617.14792.3.camel@lmail.bathnetworks.co.uk> <45d750d20507181013a90065f@mail.gmail.com> <ybslybhivy.lyb@mail.opusnet.com>
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On 7/18/05, Gary W. Swearingen <garys@opusnet.com> wrote: > Aaron Peterson <dopplecoder@gmail.com> writes: >=20 > > hostname=3D"www.mydomain.com" >=20 > Say I have two Ethernet ports and I'd like to be gary.mydomain.com on > one and gary2.mydomain.com or gary.mydomain2.com on the other; then > what? >=20 > A computer's domain name is set in several places -- not always the > same values. Most commonly they're in DNS servers and /etc/hosts and, > of course, the computer's kernel as set by the "hostname" command (eg, > using /etc/rc.conf's "hostname" variable). But since there's only one > "hostname" setting, which can't always match all the others, it's > never made sense to me to set "hostname" to any public Internet domain > name. (And I never have, IIRC.) >=20 > And according to BCP-32, at http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2606.txt, > "localhost" is the traditional top-level domain name "pointing to the > loop back IP address" (which I think of as the 127/24 network), and it > should be used to help keep broken DNS software from using any bogus > domain on the Internet except well-known ones like "localhost". >=20 > Though the "hostname" command allows use of a top-level domain, other > software doesn't (eg, "sendmail"), so it seems that a good domain is > "something.localhost", where "something" may be "localhost", which > might avoid some problems with broken software, or something more > creative and maybe assigned uniquely to each of a group of computers. > It is not used in the public (or maybe even a private) DNS system, > except as an identifier for log files. >=20 > Am I missing something? It's quite likely. What other software > than sendmail needs my single "hostname" and when? Setting your public dns names on your dns servers and possibly in /etc/hosts is probably a better option depending on your goals. An arbitrary hostname has been fine for me in all cases. Do whatever accomplishes your goals. Aaron
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