Re: Message fron chron: cannot get ip address for localhost
Lo, on Monday, November 12, Cheryl Homiak did write:
> Ok, fitst I checked and made sure I do have a dynamic isp. I do.
> Secondly, I now have got it to recognize my fqdn as
> maranatha.chartermi.net and my dnsdomainname as chartermi.net.
> However, if I put localhost in between the "127.0.0.1 and the
> "maranatha.chartermi.net" I will start getting "localhost" as the fqdn.
Right. As I explain in my description of how the whole FQDN thing works
(being sent in a separate message), your FQDN needs to be the first
hostname on the line, immediately after the IP address. Putting it on the
127.0.0.1 address should be fine; this is what I do at work where I have a
DHCP address.
(This is actually documented in the /etc/hosts manpage, kind of. You have
to combine that manpage with about three others to really understand what's
going on.)
> Also, as soon as I put localhost anywhere in the/etc/hosts, fetchmail
> hangs right after looking at the first message; no delivery and no
> explanation even on verbose.
That's surprising: I've got localhost in my /etc/hosts, and fetchmail does
just fine. See below for one possibility.
> I also tried putting my internet address in the /etc/hosts file; though
> it's dynamic it has remained constant. When I did this and ran fetchmail,
> I got something about "neighbor table overflow".
I'm not entirely sure I know what that's about.
> When I type "ifconfig" my loopback interface doesn't show; if I type
> "ifconfig lo" it shows but not as running. Only if I mannually bring it up
> does it appear to be up.
Ok. This may have something to do with why fetchmail is having issues.
Check your networking configuration; your loopback interface should be up
all the time. Make sure that /etc/network/interfaces contains the line
iface lo inet loopback
in addition to whatever you've got for your ethernet interfaces.
> I also did notice when using pump "maybe dhcpcd would tell me this with
> the proper options; I don't know) that my isp's hostname is showing up as
> mad.chartermi.net (I assume mad for Madison) but I wasn't told to use the
> "mad" anywhere.
That's probably not that important.
> While I do of course have an email address with my isp, they apparently
> don't use a hostname to identify me, so I don't have a hostname per se
> with them.
This is normal. There most likely is a hostname associated with your IP;
you can do an nslookup to find it out. However, if your ISP is like most
others, the hostname is not going to just roll off your tongue; my
*official* hostname (changed slightly to make it slightly harder for folks
to break into my system) is d9c2358f.gw897.dsl.airmail.net---not terribly
memorable.
By the way, you don't actually have to use your ISP's domain name as your
own. I used to do this, but I ran into problems when I tried to send mail
to other addresses in the same domain: exim thought they should be
delivered locally and complained because the usernames didn't exist. The
easiest solution was just to give myself a unique hostname; now, all mail
goes where it's supposed to.
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