[CentOS] Avoid .local (WAS Reg. setting Domain name on Cento 5 pc)

Johnny Hughes wrote:
>
> Take this name that I use:  myth.home.local
>
> $ hostname
> myth.home.local
I would just like to note a mild warning here about using the ".local" 
domain.

Systems that implement multicast DNS (mDNS) often reserve the ".local" 
domain for mDNS lookups (whether this is good or bad has been in 
dispute). Multicast DNS allows lookup of hosts on the local host by 
querying all machines on the local network rather than by using a local 
nameserver.

A box with mDNS turned on will look up ".local" names using mDNS instead 
of the default nameserver. Both Apple and SuSE systems are configured to 
have mdns turned on by default.

Before we knew this, we set up our intranet using a ".local" domain. 
Later, when we added Macs and a lone SuSE system, we found they could 
not do ".local" lookups in some circumstances. We ended up having to 
fiddle with the settings on those machines. See for example: 
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107800.

In retrospect, using "lan" or ".site" or something else would have been 
better. Since we have our own domain and run our own nameservers, we 
could also have used something like intranet.ourdomain.com.

Dan