Re: domain name

[Tom H <tomh0665@gmail.com>]

On Fri, Aug 31, 2012 at 5:22 PM, Glenn English <ghe@slsware.com> wrote:
>
> Debian squeeze gets the host's domain name from the first
> non-comment or non-empty line of /etc/hosts?? If it likes
> that line??
>
> Not from /etc/hostname and not from the "kernel.domainname = "
> line in /etc/sysctl.conf? ("kernel.domainname = example.com" is
> that line, commented out, in my recently installed squeeze.)
> And not from /etc/resolv.conf? Or does it rely on DNS?
>
> I needed to change a domain name this morning on a computer
> I'm working on, and I was told to do those different things
> from several different websites. Setting it in /etc/hosts seems
> to have worked. Why is this trivial task so obscure?
>
> I must be missing something big time. hostname was coming up with
> the right answer, but hostname -f kept saying "Name or service not
> known". Can anyone tell me what I've got wrong? And the Debian way
> of setting the domain name? (It's working now, AFAIK, but I'd like
> to set it correctly...)

With "libnss-myhostname" installed, I have "127.0.0.1 localhost" in
"/etc/hosts" and "host.domain" in "/etc/hostname".

Without "libnss-myhostname" installed, I have "127.0.0.1 localhost"
and either "127.0.1.1 host.domain host" or "a.b.c.d host.domain host"
in "/etc/hosts" and either "host" or "host.domain" in "/etc/hostname".