https://tanguy.ortolo.eu/blog/article5/fq-hostnames en a blog about Debian and self-hosting Sat, 21 May 2011 13:06:00 +0000 PluXml https://tanguy.ortolo.eu/blog/article5/fq-hostnames/#c1305983174-1 https://tanguy.ortolo.eu/blog/article5/fq-hostnames/#c1305983174-1 The hostname manpage on GNU is simply broken. Many OSes seem to think you use the short name and then use the domainname command for the suffix, but that’s wrong – the domainname command is for NIS/YP only. The correct thing is to use the FQDN (foo.bar.com) as hostname, and use either: 127.0.0.1 foo.bar.com foo localhost or: 127.0.0.1 localhost 1.2.3.4 foo.bar.com foo as /etc/hosts, depending on whether you have a static (second) or dynamic (first example) primary IPv4 address. (Using 127.0.1.1 will also spectacularily fail in some cases.) The only drawback I identified so far is the kdm login window in squeeze/sid – but then, the text is too wide for it even when using the short hostname, so why bother? That’s cosmetic after all, and clearly a bug in the theming. Sat, 21 May 2011 13:06:00 +0000 mirabilos https://tanguy.ortolo.eu/blog/article5/fq-hostnames/#c1305954574-1 https://tanguy.ortolo.eu/blog/article5/fq-hostnames/#c1305954574-1 @Tanguy: a common fallback (and used with hostname) is to just use "uname -n". This explains why this works despite the absence of answers from the resolver. Sat, 21 May 2011 05:09:00 +0000 Vincent Bernat https://tanguy.ortolo.eu/blog/article5/fq-hostnames/#c1305930613-1 https://tanguy.ortolo.eu/blog/article5/fq-hostnames/#c1305930613-1 Put the hostname in /etc/hostname. Put 127.0.1.1 name.domain name in /etc/hosts. Now hostname -s will say hostname, and hostname -d will say domain. This is the right approach, I believe. Fri, 20 May 2011 22:30:00 +0000 Fernando https://tanguy.ortolo.eu/blog/article5/fq-hostnames/#c1305909606-1 https://tanguy.ortolo.eu/blog/article5/fq-hostnames/#c1305909606-1 hostname != fqdn hostname != domain name hostname.domain.name = DNS name Fri, 20 May 2011 16:40:00 +0000 Bruce https://tanguy.ortolo.eu/blog/article5/fq-hostnames/#c1305909526-1 https://tanguy.ortolo.eu/blog/article5/fq-hostnames/#c1305909526-1 I agree - I have switched from using short host names in /etc/hostname to using a fqdn and also saw benefits, such as playing nicely with Postfix as you mentioned, but also when setting up Puppet. I have not seen any drawbacks to using fqdn in /etc/hostname. Fri, 20 May 2011 16:38:00 +0000 Albert https://tanguy.ortolo.eu/blog/article5/fq-hostnames/#c1305879523-1 https://tanguy.ortolo.eu/blog/article5/fq-hostnames/#c1305879523-1 OpenOffice can have issues if not fqdn is set in your hostname and your dns doesn't resolve yourmachine.(local) in a short time period See: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=619968 How it the correct network configuration in this specific case ? Thanks! Fri, 20 May 2011 08:18:00 +0000 Javi https://tanguy.ortolo.eu/blog/article5/fq-hostnames/#c1305874362-1 https://tanguy.ortolo.eu/blog/article5/fq-hostnames/#c1305874362-1 dhclient should probably use gethostname() rather than read /etc/hostname itself. Fri, 20 May 2011 06:52:00 +0000 Jon https://tanguy.ortolo.eu/blog/article5/fq-hostnames/#c1305873767-1 https://tanguy.ortolo.eu/blog/article5/fq-hostnames/#c1305873767-1 @M: Indeed, I made a mistake, the host name is usually associated with another loopback address, 127.0.1.1. @Vincent: Strange: I made several tests and when using the FQDN as the hostname, hostname -f returns if even if no resolution can return it. Fri, 20 May 2011 06:42:00 +0000 Tanguy