On Mon 19 Feb 2018 at 12:28:03 (+0000), Jeremy Nicoll wrote: > On Thu, 15 Feb 2018, at 16:21, Dan Purgert wrote: > > > > Later, once you understand how a local network works, you can come > > > up with a theme. Or some convention that lets you identify the > > > computer by its name. The name that you have chosen. > > Machine-naming makes sense to me - having done that with a variety > of (blush) Windows machines in my LAN. I've toyed with versions of > Linux, and used a few live-CD ones over the years, and I'm fairly sure > that as well as being asked to supply a hostname I've also been asked > to supply a domain value. > > What, on a home LAN, is that used for?
Nothing, with the possible exceptions of: . avoiding this message at boot up: Mon Feb 19 04:58:38 2018: [....] Starting MTA:hostname --fqdn did not return a fully qualified name, Mon Feb 19 04:58:38 2018: dc_minimaldns will not work. Please fix your /etc/hosts setup. . satisfying a broken smarthost¹, . causing some discussion here. However, even though bug #504427 has never been answered, I don't think I'm seeing this message any more except on wheezy (as above). So here I have: $ cat /etc/mailname alum $ head /etc/hosts # /root/hosts-1-local-template # List of local hosts. # Adjust the two lines for this host when installing. # Check the IPv6 lines occasionally because they change them. 127.0.0.1 localhost 127.0.1.1 alum 192.168.1.1 router 192.168.1.2 roku2w $ I've sometimes wondered what other people dream up as their domainnames; that is, people who don't have a legitimate reason to put something like example.com. ¹IOW check /var/log/exim4/mainlog that sending an email is successful. Cheers, David.