Re: hostname question

[tao-patrick PSYCH YALE EDU (Patrick Tao)]

Hello everyone, 


I am currently using RHL 4.2 on my laptop.

I only have a loopback ip address for my laptop and never plan to connect it to 
any network with the exception of a dialed up network (slip or ppp).  


Question:

1.  Is the ip of my laptop the loopback address

2.  my /etc/hosts file looks like this:

loopback ip	localhost patrick.laptop.org

does this mean that localhost = patrick.laptop.org ?


3.  If that is true then what is the function of the /etc/HOSTNAME and 
/etc/sysconfig/network files ?  


I noticed that I can have /etc/HOSTNAME and /etc/sysconfig/network set to just 
patick.  Then if I just type hostname it returns to me patrick.  But if I ping I 
must type patrick.laptop.org.  Can someone tell me the purpose of /etc/HOSTNAME, 
/etc/sysconfig/network and /etc/hosts.  I was thinking that localhost and 
hostname are the same thing --am I wrong ?

I read the few pages in both the sys adm book for linux and redhat linux book; I 
get the impression that they are very similiar but not sure.


can anybody give me any feedback on this issue ??



Many Thanks, 

-p