Michael Brown wrote:
This appears to be sufficient for renaming a computer that is *not* a
domain
member. I am not sure how this would interact with computers that *are*
domain members, and I don't have time to test it right now, so any input
would be welcome.
I'm a little wary of this patch... It prepends "star-" to the hostname
first off (perhaps something to do with StarWind), and also doesn't
check for an empty hostname, as far as I can tell. These could be
addressed with a modified version of the patch.
I would not advise anyone to change the computer name is this fashion
for a domain member. All of the name-change functions which are used
when one changes computername for a computer already-joined would be
skipped. If the empty-hostname-check is implemented, current domain
members in the world who upgrade their sanbootconf but do not hand out a
DHCP hostname option should stay the same.
Seems like it could be useful for the non-domain-member scenario, but I
still say the right way to choose your hostname is to use Windows to set
it; just too many unknowns for me. I have a bit of a hard time
understanding why you'd really want to use this, though... If you're
booting computer A from SAN X, it's a one-to-one relationship. If
you're booting computer B from SAN X and want computer B's name to be
different, you could not use SAN X for both computers A and B
simultaneously, so why change the hostname? If you've got copy-on-write
or some other delta system and computers A and B connect to SANs X and Y
(derived from Z) respectively, why not have a one-time computer rename
using the Windows interface? The only answer I can perceive would be
"stateless clients at each boot". That's where this could be useful, in
my opinion...
Who knows what software makes a note of the computer-name for licensing
(or other) reasons, though. Without using Windows (or Mini-Setup) to
change the name, there aren't any MS-supported guarantees, as far as I
know. Maybe supportability is not a concern.
I assume that these registry entries were determined by the developer to
be those that Mini-Setup or the computer-name-change function seems to
modify. I believe some other commercial products do something similar.
I've used offline registry editing of the same entries myself to
accomplish the same thing, and haven't yet encountered a major issue.
Either way, implementing an empty hostname check is likely best, so only
those who wish to attempt it are affected by this change.
- Shao Miller
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