Temlakos wrote:
> But I also would like to know why fully qualified domain names do not
> get set in one place, and for that matter, do not get set during
> installation.
I, too, would like to know why your domain name did not get set during
installation. I've always had the opportunity to do so, ever since Red
Hat 5.x.
I believe it is possible, though, to select that your domain name should
be set via DHCP. Not all DHCP servers will send that information, and if
you have one of those, then your domain name will not get set.
> Sorry, but for those of us who run more than one computer
> on a network, "localhost.localdomain" doesn't cut it anymore, if it ever
> did.
You appear to misunderstand the purpose of localhost.
Localhost is always supposed to mean *this* computer. It is supposed to
point to the loopback interface, which is normally 127.0.0.1. That
doesn't correspond to your Ethernet card, or your modem, or your Token
Ring card, or your carrier pigeon interface. It is for use when you want
to send TCP/IP messages, and know that they will be responded to by a
service running on *this* computer.
I can log onto a Fedora box, and a SUSE box, and an AIX box, and even a
Windows 2000 box, and ping localhost, on all of them does the same
thing: it confirms that the internal loopback network device is up.
No well-configured computer will ever use localhost to refer to another
one. It is, as you say, useless on networks of more than one PC. But
that's not what it's there for.
Hope this helps,
James.
--
E-mail address: james | "I would like to apologise to the relatives of the fan
@westexe.demon.co.uk | who gave me 29 books to sign in Odyssey 7, Manchester.
| I'm a little twitchy towards the end of a day of
| signing and did not mean to kill and eat him."
| -- Terry Pratchett.
