topic Re: Systems Administration in Operating System - HP-UX

Systems Administration

Faizer — Thu, 17 Jul 2003 12:30:54 GMT

Hi Gurus;
Please let me know the implications of having a different system name and a hostname?
thankyou in advance

Re: Systems Administration

Pete Randall — Thu, 17 Jul 2003 12:33:01 GMT

Confusion?

Pete

Re: Systems Administration

Patrick Wallek — Thu, 17 Jul 2003 12:33:26 GMT

Huh? Do you mean changing the name of a current system?

If you mean just changing a current systems name, then unless you tell everything else that the name has changed, you could very well have problem accessing the machine.

If that's not what you mean, please explain further.

Re: Systems Administration

George_Dodds — Thu, 17 Jul 2003 12:35:27 GMT

Do you mean you want the server name to be different to what the rest of the network knows it as?

Ta

george

Re: Systems Administration

Karthik S S — Thu, 17 Jul 2003 12:37:06 GMT

If you are comparing Solaris with HP-UX then it is no possible. I think only in Solaris you can have a nodename and a hostname..

-Karthik S S

Re: Systems Administration

John Collier — Thu, 17 Jul 2003 12:40:45 GMT

Faizer,

It sounds like you are referring to having a TCP/IP host name that is different than your system name (ie. System Name = HPBOX1 and Network Name = HPServer1).

If this is the case, then I don???t see much more of a problem than what our good friend Pete stated.

As long as you have competent SysAdmins, then there should really be no big issues as long as all of the systems that need to connect to the box know how to get there.

The only time I have ever had to know or use my System Name was when I was opening a case with HP for something.

Of course, if I have overlooked something I???m sure these wonderful people will point out my oversights ;-)

Re: Systems Administration

John Collier — Thu, 17 Jul 2003 12:44:25 GMT

For clarification reasons, Network Name above should have read ???HPServer1.yourdomain.com???

This would normally be something handled by the DHCP servers in the network???

Re: Systems Administration

Bill Hassell — Thu, 17 Jul 2003 12:49:39 GMT

Yes, you can have a NODENAME that is different than the HOSTNAME. /etc/rc.config.d/netconf only documents HOSTNAME. However, if you check the scripts in /sbin/init.d that refer to HOSTNAME, you'll find the script /sbin/init.d/hostname and here is how NODENAME is used:

hostname $HOSTNAME
set_return

if [ -z "$NODENAME" ] ; then
uname -S ${HOSTNAME%%.*}
else
uname -S $NODENAME
fi
set_return

In other words, if $NODENAME has not been set (it's zero-length), then uname -S will be set to the $HOSTNAME value (with possible domain info stripped). If $NODENAME does have a value, then that value is used.

(netconf is missing comments about this variable)

NODENAME is the LAN name that is defined for name resolution (/etc/hosts, DNS or NIS) and can (but not always recommended) be a fully qualified domain name (FQDN) such as rabbit.mydept.com while HOSTNAME is limited to the rules for uname -S. It is a good idea to keep them the same and use aliases in /etc/hosts or DNS to have alternate names for the same IP address.

Re: Systems Administration

Tim D Fulford — Thu, 17 Jul 2003 12:53:34 GMT

Bill got there just before me..... (grrrrr)

I have nodes that are known by different names, BUT I always try to keep the systems name & nodename the same & use (DNS/hosts...)aliases to do the rest.

Regards

Tim

Re: Systems Administration

Karthik S S — Thu, 17 Jul 2003 12:55:49 GMT

Oops ... I was not knowing this ... thanks bill

-Karthik S S

Re: Systems Administration

RolandH — Thu, 17 Jul 2003 14:24:29 GMT

I addition to Bill's explanations - what ever

the command uname -S will use for setting the system_name it should be resolvable in the file /etc/hosts. Otherwise you can run in problems. And the hostname resultion in /etc/nsswitch.conf should be
hosts: files [NOTFOUND=continue] dns

Regards
Roland