cannot understand name "peter.first.try"

[Malcolm Kay]

On Friday 23 July 2004 11:58, Peter Ryan wrote:
> Hi,
> This is probably a contender for the dumbest question
> of the year.

I wouldn't exectly call your question dump; but it is not very explicit.
>
> When I defined my IP address in the freeBSD installation,
> I had to give a name. All the examples use something
> like the one I entered, i.e. peter.first.try, except they
> often used a xxx.xxx.com.

I take it that peter.first.try appears in response to:
$ hostname

If your machine name is not going to appear on the public network
it can be pretty much anything that satisfies the syntax rules 
such as peter.first.try. But you could have problems if it matches 
the name of another site in which you are interested.

But precisely when does xxx.xxx.com appear? Do you have web related
software (other than browsers) running?

What is the entry in /etc/hosts along side your machine's
IP address?

Malcolm