Wow. In a nutshell, you have reduced this whole thread to: In some way, shape, or form, get the hostname that you want your machine to be in either DNS or /etc/hosts. As others have pointed out [myself included], this is not even needed if you set your hostname to something other than "localhost", "localhost.localdomain", or "(none)". There are GUIs for doing this, and there are the files that the GUIs edit.Exactly whats required for laptops :) - with one more step
DHCP Client: I'll make my own DNS entry in /etc/hosts for mmm.nnn.ooo
Satish
As I indicated earlier, if your ip address is really changing and you want your hostname to remain the same, then you should consider having a dynamic DNS. If your ip address and hostname changes, then all you need is DNS [assuming there is a one-to-one between ip and hostname]. /etc/hosts is fine for static stuff. Keep dynamic stuff out of it.
I was merely highlighting the intriguing [and somewhat useless] conversation that could occur between the DHCP client and server. Now, having said that, I'd say it's a great design - there are 50 ways of doing the same thing, each of them with their own uses and benefits. It just means that it appears silly to ask the DHCP server for a hostname when you know you are going to ignore it...
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