[Matt Zimmerman] >> a) Can I get the hostname in my shell script another way (this could be a >> question for this list)? > > getent hosts foo.bar.baz getent is available on Linux and Solaris (7 and 8). It is not available on Tru64 Unix 5.2, Irix 6.5.15, Mac OS X 10.2, HP-UX (11.00 and 11.22) and AIX (5.1).