Re: domain name [SOLVED]
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
Reply to: