hostname doesn't stick

jdow jdow at earthlink.net
Sun Sep 17 22:38:36 UTC 2006


From: "Mikkel L. Ellertson" <mikkel at infinity-ltd.com>

> Tim wrote:
>> On Sun, 2006-09-17 at 10:32 +0100, Anne Wilson wrote:
>> Do you mean adding a line for the local host addresses to the hosts
>> file?  If you have any service, including the X server, sendmail, etc.,
>> that tries to start up using the machine's hostname, it has to be able
>> to know what IP and name are associated with each other.
>> 
> This is especially true if you are not connected to a network. And
> it has to be an IP address that the machine responds to. So you can
> not give it an IP address like 127.0.0.2 unless you create a second
> interface like lo:1 that responds to that IP address.

[root at thing ~]# ssh 127.1.1.1
root at 127.1.1.1's password:
Last login: Sun Sep 17 14:43:14 2006 from 127.1.1.1
[root at thing ~]#

No further comment needed. But I will anyway. The hosts file is for
name lookup. It does not assign addresses or enable addresses.

> One of problems is home networks connected to a firewall/router
> using DHCP. A lot of them handle DHCP, and act as a caching name
> server for the local network, but they do not DHCP lease to hostname
> mapping. So you can not ask the name server for the IP address for
> your hostname. Now, if you can configure the DHCP server so that you
> always get the same hostname, you can put that entry in your
> /etc/hosts file and be all set.
> 
> A better solution might be to add an option to the DHCP client so
> that it can add/remove a /etc/hosts entry for your hostname that
> matches the IP address assigned to the interface. You would need to
> be able to control it on an individual interface option. (I have not
> looked into this - do any of the DHCP clients support this?)

I'm not sure about dhcp clients; but I do know that the Microsoft
DHCP defaults attempt to register the changes with the DNS servers.
I have that blocked for security reasons. And I have fixed address
DHCP assignments instead.

{^_^}




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