[CentOS] Short or long hostname ?
Valeri Galtsev
galtsev at kicp.uchicago.edu
Wed Apr 10 14:17:23 UTC 2019
On 4/10/19 8:23 AM, Simon Matter via CentOS wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> For the last ten years or so, I've defined the short hostname in
>> /etc/hostname and the FQDN in /etc/hosts. Now I wanted to double-check
>> this information, which eventually led me to this page:
>>
>> *
>> https://serverfault.com/questions/331936/setting-the-hostname-fqdn-or-short-name
>>
>> Now I admit I'm even more confused than before.
>>
>> Is there some reliable piece of information on this subject for CentOS ?
>
> IMHO for those having proper DNS in place, the hostname should be set to
> the FQDN in whatever place it is supposed to be set. I quite feel there is
> something wrong if the only place where the FQDN is listed is the
> /etc/hosts file.
>
> I'm not very happy with how the issue was handled in Linux and the
> different distributions in the last decades. Not to mention the
> inconsistency in the relevant man pages.
Well, I am unhappy for about as long about /etc/hosts and how name
resolution "should" happen which it doesn't, namely, if
/etc/nsswitch.conf says
hosts: files dns
then ideally /etc/hosts should be used first, then nameservers. However
(and this is true both for Linux and FreeBSD), some commands never look
into /etc/hosts (e.g., command host), whereas some do use /etc/hosts
(e.g., command ping).
Valeri
>
> I found the info mentioned in the FreeBSD man pages quite helpful even if
> it has to be "translated" to Linux. See the excerpt of the mentioned man
> pages below. If you believe this is heresy to be posted here, please don't
> read it :-)
>
> Regards,
> Simon
>
> ----%>-------------------------------
> root at freebsd:~ # man hostname
> HOSTNAME(1) FreeBSD General Commands Manual
> HOSTNAME(1)
>
> NAME
> hostname - set or print name of current host system
>
> SYNOPSIS
> hostname [-f] [-s | -d] [name-of-host]
>
> DESCRIPTION
> The hostname utility prints the name of the current host. The
> super-user
> can set the hostname by supplying an argument; this is usually done in
> the initialization script /etc/rc.d/hostname, normally run at boot time.
> This script uses the hostname variable in /etc/rc.conf.
> ...
>
>
> root at freebsd:~ # man rc.conf
> RC.CONF(5) FreeBSD File Formats Manual
> RC.CONF(5)
>
> NAME
> rc.conf - system configuration information
>
> DESCRIPTION
> The file rc.conf contains descriptive information about the local host
> ...
> hostname (str) The fully qualified domain name (FQDN) of this host on
> the network. This should almost certainly be set to
> something meaningful, even if there is no network connection.
> If dhclient(8) is used to set the hostname via DHCP, this
> variable should be set to an empty string. Within a jail(8)
> the hostname is generally already set and this variable may
> absent. If this value remains unset when the system is done
> booting your console login will display the default hostname
> of "Amnesiac".
>
> _______________________________________________
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> CentOS at centos.org
> https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
>
--
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Valeri Galtsev
Sr System Administrator
Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics
University of Chicago
Phone: 773-702-4247
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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