kryten.berkeley.edu would be what is called a Fully Qualified Domain Name.

I believe that should be written “kryten.berkeley.edu.”—a FQDN is supposed to end with a period, as if to indicate that it belongs to the Universal Domain.

Not wishing to be pickily argumentative on a minor subject, but I haven't seen it done that way, Odysseus.

Not to say that you're wrong: I've just never seen it done that way.

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The three names could point to 1, 2 or 3 systems with 1, 2 or 3 different IP addresses on 1, 2 or 3 different subnets.

I have systems at work that are on 3 different subnets.

I have other systems that can be accessed by multiple addresses on the same subnet.

I have many more systems that are registered in multiple domains.

Yes! Of course, you are right! Each NIC can be connected to a particular net or subnet. When practising networking at college, we had one server set up as a router for 10 separate networks, each with it's own IP range. One single NIC on the router had 10 different addresses! *slaps forehead*

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[quote]Thanks LGM, I'm also a "student of IT". I used to work on an ISP helpdesk (Windows/Mac) in London for nearly 4 years dealing with home users. My UNIX knowledge is very slim.
[quote]

Hi Keith

My own Unix knowledge is pretty slim, too, as I had my first Linux lesson this week. However, naming conventions for domains, etc, remain the same.

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[…] a FQDN is supposed to end with a period […]

Not wishing to be pickily argumentative on a minor subject, but I haven't seen it done that way, Odysseus.

Not to say that you're wrong: I've just never seen it done that way.

Well, I’m far from expert—and Wikipedia isn’t always the most reliable source—but see their article on FQDN.

P.S. They do say, “In practice, the dot is almost always omitted in everyday applications ….”

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[…] a FQDN is supposed to end with a period […]

Not wishing to be pickily argumentative on a minor subject, but I haven't seen it done that way, Odysseus.

Not to say that you're wrong: I've just never seen it done that way.

Well, I’m far from expert—and Wikipedia isn’t always the most reliable source—but see their article on FQDN.

P.S. They do say, “In practice, the dot is almost always omitted in everyday applications ….”

You're correct on both accounts... it "is" the way things are properly done, but seeing as all major browsers auto-resolve to having the TLD as the last portion of the FQDN, the final period is an interesting and technically active footnote in DNS and Internet lore.

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Computer nut, Distributed Computing freak, Jeeper and Dodge Ram driver.

Life is worth living... and worth discovering.

I run VMWare ESXi Free - why don't you?

I had a feeling there was a way to actually set the hostname to "--fqdn" and I have been able to reproduce this. I used SLES10 (SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 10) and it's remarkably easy to do so from the command line.

This is how mine worked out:

Pegasus:~ # hostname
Pegasus
Pegasus:~ # cat > /root/hostname.txt
--fqdn
ctrl+d
Pegasus:~ # hostname -F /root/hostname.txt
Pegasus:~ # hostname
--fqdn
Pegasus:~ # exit

[open a terminal window again]

--fqdn:~ # hostname
--fqdn
--fqdn:~ # vi hostname.txt
[change --fqdn to Pegasus and save]
--fqdn:~ # hostname -F /root/hostname.txt
--fqdn:~ # hostname
Pegasus
--fqdn:~ # exit

[open a termianl window again]

Pegasus:~ #

I would have to agree that it's because of a .conf file or incorrect syntax somewhere. Perhaps instead of --fqdn being outside of quotes, it got put inside double quotations somwhere and is being read as a string instead of a switch.

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Linux laptop:
record uptime: 1511d 20h 19m (ended due to the power brick giving-up)

I've solved this problem, and unfortunately it wasn't the cause of all our woes. It turns out its one of those Solaris/Linux incompatibilities. Two of them, actually...

When you run "su" on linux and start a shell the shell you start will source the startup files from the root account's home directory. On solaris, it will source the startup files on the account you are running "su" from. I've always thought that was pretty dangerous.

So what was happening was, I was running "su" from the boincadm account on solaris. Since /bin/sh is unusable, I always start bash after I become root on a solaris machine. I wasn't aware that someone had created a .bashrc in the boincadm account.

In that .bashrc file, there was a command that sets a variable to the fully qualified domain name when run on linux. "MYHOST=`hostname --fqdn`" On solaris, there is no --fqdn option to hostname. An argument to hostname there attempts to set the hostname. When run as boincadm, nothing happens, since only root can set the hostname. When run as root, it sets the hostname to --fqdn.

Mystery solved. Unfortunately, not the big mystery.

Eric

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@SETIEric@qoto.org (Mastodon)

I've solved this problem, and unfortunately it wasn't the cause of all our woes. It turns out its one of those Solaris/Linux incompatibilities. Two of them, actually...

When you run "su" on linux and start a shell the shell you start will source the startup files from the root account's home directory. On solaris, it will source the startup files on the account you are running "su" from. I've always thought that was pretty dangerous.

So what was happening was, I was running "su" from the boincadm account on solaris. Since /bin/sh is unusable, I always start bash after I become root on a solaris machine. I wasn't aware that someone had created a .bashrc in the boincadm account.

In that .bashrc file, there was a command that sets a variable to the fully qualified domain name when run on linux. "MYHOST=`hostname --fqdn`" On solaris, there is no --fqdn option to hostname. An argument to hostname there attempts to set the hostname. When run as boincadm, nothing happens, since only root can set the hostname. When run as root, it sets the hostname to --fqdn.

Mystery solved. Unfortunately, not the big mystery.

Eric

And this, it seems, is how IT people learn their profession... day by day. There's ALWAYS something new to discover. NO-ONE knows everything. There is no shame in admitting you don't know something. It's a helluva good feeling when you finally nut out a problem, though. I hope you get plenty of those warm, fuzzy feelings, Matt. You deserve them.

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It's a helluva good feeling when you finally nut out a problem, though. I hope you get plenty of those warm, fuzzy feelings, Matt. You deserve them.

Or at least some good rum or a fine whiskey. That always gives me warm, fuzzy feelings. :D

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The universe is a pretty big place. It's bigger than anything anyone has ever dreamed of before. So if it's just us... seems like an awful waste of space. Right?

Lol Matt, the 10 year old zmailer problem I linked to was also on Solaris and caused by a config file made for debian/linux.

Kinda funny to find the solution to something like this in a 10 year old maillist archive XD

<Capt. Crais> "KRYTEN!!!" </Capt. Crais>

.....

Oops, wrong channel...

^.^

[…] a FQDN is supposed to end with a period […]

Not wishing to be pickily argumentative on a minor subject, but I haven't seen it done that way, Odysseus.

Not to say that you're wrong: I've just never seen it done that way.

Well, I’m far from expert—and Wikipedia isn’t always the most reliable source—but see their article on FQDN.

P.S. They do say, “In practice, the dot is almost always omitted in everyday applications ….”

You're correct on both accounts... it "is" the way things are properly done, but seeing as all major browsers auto-resolve to having the TLD as the last portion of the FQDN, the final period is an interesting and technically active footnote in DNS and Internet lore.

So that's it... we're just too lazy to add a dot, huh? Interesting point, though (pun unintended)

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