On Sun, Feb 13, 2005 at 11:21:09AM -0600, John Hasler wrote:
> Every machine with more than one interface has at least two hostnames:
> localhost on network 127 and something else on the external networks.
Nitpicking: every machine have exactly one hostname, that is contained
in /proc/sys/kernel/hostname. The host _may_ have one or more network
interfaces, every network interface _may_ have one or more addresses,
and those addresses _may_ resolve to domain names (which are also called
hostnames, but are completely independent from
/proc/sys/kernel/hostname).
> I think there are two problems here: some packages make assumptions about
> *the* IP number and/or *the* hostname, and /etc/hosts gets misconfigured
> either by buggy software or the admin.
Well, there is a quite sensible default for desktop machines with just
one physical network interface. You just have to realize that this may
not work for an increasing number of machines (think about laptops with
both a wireless and a TP interface, connected to two different
DHCP-managed networks at the same time).
The biggest mistake people are used to make is thinking that the
contents of /proc/sys/kernel/hostname has _anything_ to do with any
address on any network interface, and just blindly use the output of
`hostname`.
Gabor
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MTA SZTAKI Computer and Automation Research Institute
Hungarian Academy of Sciences
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