[6527] in RedHat Linux List
How can I pick a domain name (Thanks! and a followup)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Ed Osinski)
Wed Nov 27 21:59:53 1996
From: osinski@valis.cs.nyu.edu (Ed Osinski)
To: redhat-list@redhat.com
Date: Wed, 27 Nov 1996 21:59:01 -0500 (EST)
Resent-From: redhat-list@redhat.com
Reply-To: redhat-list@redhat.com
Thanks for all the help!
As Justin Dobbs says, picking a name for my machine is fun, so I don't
want my ISP to determine the name for me if this is practical. I don't
want to pay for a registered domain name, I was just wondering what the
'right' thing to do was.
I currently have a FQDN with no dots in it, so my domain name is
reported as (none). This annoys sendmail, it doesn't seem like the
right thing to do, and I couldn't find the answer in the docs, so I
figured I'd ask. I have no problems connecting to my ISP, web browsing,
etc., but even if my setup 'worked', I wanted to know the Right Thing To
Do. I was pleasantly surprised at all the helpful responses I got. The
answers seems to fall into a number of camps:
1) Don't set a domain name at all.
2) While you're not connected to the Internet, it doesn't matter what
your domain name is, so almost anything is ok, but it's a good idea
to pick something that doesn't otherwise exist on the Internet.
3) The ISP determines your machine's FQDN when you connect to it, and
it won't be the same every time.
3a) Change the FQDN on the fly as connections are established and
broken.
3b) Update the /etc/hosts file when you connect to have the IP address
and FQDN assigned by the ISP; assign the name you want to use as an
alias.
(1) seems the simplest solution, if it weren't for that dang sendmail
pause. Bill Kerr's 'resolv.conf' trick seems to be a nice way to
handle this. (I remember seeing others that I'll have to look at.)
It might be an undue amount of pickyness on my part, but I don't know
for sure if what I pick doesn't exist on the Internet, or never will
while my machine is connected. That's what bothers me about (2). On
the other hand, if this information is not transmitted to my ISP, I
guess no one else on the Internet will know, and no confusion will
result. (I don't plan to set up a server for http, or anything like
that. I just want to be able to do client-type things, like read
mail, news, to rlogin and do web browsing, etc.) If I understand
things correctly, if I pick a FQDN for my machine that already happens
to exist on the Internet, say, "www.redhat.com" as a perverse example,
the only problem would be that if *I* try to access that machine, mine
will be contacted instead. (I don't plan on doing anything as idiotic
as that -- it's just an example.)
(3a) is an interesting solution, but one I'm not happy with, because
changing my machine's name around dynamically sounds odd to me. I set
my shell prompt to include the hostname. When I connect to my ISP,
will my prompt change when I hit return? Unfortunately, I don't like
either a yes or no answer to that question. :-) I mean, my machine
hasn't changed, it's just a matter of the status of a PPP connection.
(3b) seems a nice compromise -- I get to name my machine any way I
want, `hostname` doesn't change, and the name the ISP gives me works
too.
Thanks again for the answers -- now I just have to choose which one I
like best :-)
Something still bothers me:
It's possible to have more than one PPP connection simultaneously,
which raises the question -- what the the FQDN of my machine then? If
multiple connections are possible, it seems that my machine will have
multiple names; one for each interface. If this is the case, then it
is not exactly a machine that has a name, but a machine/interface pair
which has a name. This means that it might make sense for the
loopback interface to have a name too; and that name I can make up as
I please.
Does this make sense?
Is there any effective difference between the following two /etc/hosts
files?
----------------------------------
127.0.0.1 localhost myname
---------------------------------
and
----------------------------------
127.0.0.1 localhost
0.0.0.0 myname
----------------------------------
I gather that the latter assigns 'myname' to the IP address 0.0.0.0,
which automagically becomes the IP address that the ISP determines upon
connection. This doesn't make sense for multiple PPP connections,
though. (Is there a definitive reference for the syntax and semantics
of these files?) It seems that both /etc/hosts will have the same
effect -- 'myname' will be translated into some address from my machine
in either case.
- Ed Osinski
(Happy turkey day!)
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