Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ukma!rutgers!cbmvax!grr From: grr@cbmvax.commodore.com (George Robbins) Newsgroups: comp.unix.ultrix Subject: Re: Use Domain In Hostname Or Not? Message-ID: <9699@cbmvax.commodore.com> Date: 15 Feb 90 20:54:02 GMT References: <4940@itivax.iti.org> <2929@decuac.DEC.COM> <22554@mimsy.umd.edu> Reply-To: grr@cbmvax.cbm.commodore.com (George Robbins) Organization: Commodore, West Chester, PA Lines: 28 In article <22554@mimsy.umd.edu> chris@mimsy.umd.edu (Chris Torek) writes: > In article <2929@decuac.DEC.COM> avolio@decuac.dec.com (Frederick M. Avolio) > writes: > >The fact is, the fully qualified domain name *is* the hostname. > > The reason you should set your host name to your FQDN is the same as > the reason you should write your own full name on any form letter or > credit-card application or survey or whatever. It is worth noting that when you do change from simple to fully qualified name, that you will have to modify your sendmail.cf file, your news setup and other things that make use of your host name and assume that somehow they should combine the `hostname` plus some kind of domain information to create and "external" host name. Yeah, /etc/exports and the like also. Ancient versions of Ultrix uucp will puke and die given a hostname that returns move than ~8 characters and don't understand that a dot is of some significance. It isn't to hard to patch in a hard-coded host name, but you gotta do it in half-a-dozen places. You can generally create aliases either thru /etc/hosts or nameservers that allow the humans to specify the traditional local part or the fully qualified name... -- George Robbins - now working for, uucp: {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!grr but no way officially representing: domain: grr@cbmvax.commodore.com Commodore, Engineering Department phone: 215-431-9349 (only by moonlite)