Systems Administration

[Faizer]

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

[Pete Randall]

Confusion?


Pete

[Patrick Wallek]

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.

[George_Dodds]

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

Ta

george

[Karthik S S]

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

[John Collier]

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 ;-)

[John Collier]

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???

[Bill Hassell]

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.

[Tim D Fulford]

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

[Karthik S S]

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

-Karthik S S

[RolandH]

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