On 7/18/05, Gary W. Swearingen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Aaron Peterson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > hostname="www.mydomain.com" > > 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? > > 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.) > > 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". > > 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. > > 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 _______________________________________________ [email protected] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
