FreeBSD Hostname Question - Whats The Proper Way

[Jonathan Horne]

On Wednesday 29 August 2007 19:05:06 Peter Pluta wrote:
> I have a box with 5 ip's pointing to it. Most of the things I run (http,
> smtp) are virtual or allow me to specify the hostname (postfix) - so I'm
> wondering what the machines hostname should be? By default it's
> localhost.localdomain. This has always confused me from the begining when I
> first started using FreeBSD, can anyone chime in? It would greatly
> appreciated.
>
> Thanks!

its fairly simple actually.  example:

my system's name is athena.  my domain, is dfwlp.com... thus my computer is 
athena.dfwlp.com.  the hostname command can show you waht your current 
hostname is:

[jhorne at athena ~] $ hostname
athena.dfwlp.com

also, there is a line in /etc/rc.conf that specifys the system's hostname when 
you start up:

[jhorne at athena ~] $ cat /etc/rc.conf|grep hostname
hostname="athena.dfwlp.com"

finally, when you are installing freebsd, during the "network configuration" 
page, the "Host:" box would be where i would put "athena", and the "Domain:" 
box would be where i put "dfwlp.com" (when you set your domain, you dont put 
the . in front of the domain name, ie, dont put .dfwlp.com in the domain 
box).

cheers,
-- 
Jonathan Horne
http://dfwlpiki.dfwlp.org
freebsd at dfwlp.com