I think I've got it, and it makes sense, in retrospect. Here's a good site:
http://www.microhowto.info/howto/persistently_change_the_hostname_of_the_local_machine_on_debian.html What happens, apparently, is that nothing ever sets the domain name at boot. When the kernel wants an FQDN, it does a machine-name lookup from /etc/hostname then looks in /etc/hosts for the machine-name. And it expects to find the machine-name and the FQDN, on one line. Maybe near the top -- I haven't looked into that. And if this doesn't work, it goes to DNS for a reverse look up the of IP. If the DNS lookup returns something with a machine-name that doesn't match /etc/hostname, it returns an error. I think this is how it works. From the futzing I've done, that seems to at least be close to what happens... This all strikes me as a little complex, but it works, and there aren't several places where there an admin could put a wrong domain name. And it doesn't happen too often, so I guess it's OK. Sure would be nice, though, if this were clearly and simply laid out in some documentation somewhere. I found lots of places that said that the domain name is *not* to be stored in /etc/hostname, but it was difficult to find where it *is* to be stored... -- Glenn English hand-wrapped from my Apple Mail -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/011bceaf-70ff-4268-a4e3-3fd81d6a4...@slsware.com
