Hostname "Chicken and Egg"

[Bob McClure Jr]

On Thu, Dec 16, 2004 at 03:01:55PM -0800, Bob Kinney wrote:
> Happy Holidays all--
> 
> I'm running RH9, and recently switched from being directly connected to
> the internet (dhcp giving me a publicly routed address) to being behind
> a router.
> 
> I reconfigured my IP address to be a static, private one now, and my 
> hostname now comes up as "localhost.localdomain".  I'm trying to name the
> host "vectra".
> 
> Looking at the man page for hostname, it says that:
> " The  host  name  is   usually   set   once   at   system   startup   in
>        /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1  or  /etc/init.d/boot  (normally by reading the con-
>        tents of a file which contains the host name, e.g.  /etc/hostname)."
> 
> Although the files mentioned aren't there, I found in /etc/rc.sysinit
> a section that seems to set the hostname by *calling* /bin/hostname.  
>  >>
> HOSTNAME=`/bin/hostname`
> if [ -f /etc/sysconfig/network ]; then
>     . /etc/sysconfig/network
> else
>     NETWORKING=no
> fi
> if [ -z "$HOSTNAME" -o "$HOSTNAME" = "(none)" ]; then
>     HOSTNAME=localhost
> fi
>  <<
> 
> 
> [root at localhost init.d]# cat /etc/sysconfig/network
> NETWORKING=yes
> HOSTNAME=localhost.localdomain
> [root at localhost init.d]#
> 
> 
> It would seem that the hostname is being set either by the
> /etc/sysconfig/network file, or by the fallout case listed in
> /etc/rc.sysinit (if -z $HOSTNAME ...).
> 
> I don't know why the hostname command would fail:
> 
> [root at localhost init.d]# cat /etc/hostname
> vectra
> [root at localhost init.d]#
> 
> Also, what does the line ". /etc/sysconfig/network" do?
> Is "." (dot) a command?
> 
> --bk

Yes.  "." means to "source", that is to execute in the current shell.
/etc/sysconfig/network is nothing but a shell script that sets
environment variables (well, shell variables, actually), one of which
is $HOSTNAME.  So edit the file so that it has your desire host name
and then reboot.

Cheers,
-- 
Bob McClure, Jr.             Bobcat Open Systems, Inc.
robertmcclure at earthlink.net  http://www.bobcatos.com
Grace happens.