My unqualified host name

[Sean Cavanaugh]

> Dunno about the OP, but my FreeBSD machines do not have nor need
> valid FQDNs because they sit behind a NAT firewall (and therefore
> do not have externally-identifiable IP addresses). I want hostname
> to simply return the unqualified host name (say, foo), not foo.com
> nor foo.uucp nor even foo.bogus. I don't need sendmail to handle
> anything but purely local traffic, such as the periodic reports to
> root, and it's just fine for it to identify itself simply as foo.
> We were able to do things like this back in the days of SunOS 4, so
> why should it be difficult to accomplish today? Indeed, why should
> it not be the default mode of operation when hostname returns an
> unqualified name?
 
 
Common practice to handle naming was to use "computer.network.TLD" such as "workstation1.freebsd.org" for the internet facing side of your network. Internal, if you were not running a split-horizon DNS setup would be to use "network.local" or simply "local" for the effect of "workstation1.freebsd.local" or "workstation1.local". therefore if for some strange reason it ever did get the FQDN outside the local network, nothing would be able to resolve it to make it an issue since there is no TLD of .Local on the internet but could easily be added to an internal DNS server for personal use.
 
 -Sean