Unix server hostname length

[John Goetz]

Is there a way to increase the hostname to be more than 8 characters?

[Pete Randall · Accepted solution]

You're just asking for trouble if you do.

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=84431
http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=600532
http://www1.itrc.hp.com/service/cki/docDisplay.do?docLocale=en_US&docId=200000063236997


Pete

[Steven E. Protter]

With HP-UX

You don't

All kinds of problems occur with hostnames longer than 8 characters.

Now fully qualified domain names you can fake out with DNS database entries.

But I ran extensive tests on hpux v1 and found it was not possible to have a 9 character hostname.

SEP

[HGN]

Hi

The hostname character length is 8 and above that will not work as others have mentioned here.

We had those issues and settled with 8 characters.

Rgds

HGN

[Alex Lavrov.]

If we are talking about hostnames, don't put strange character in it too. Characters like "-" may seem normal, but some applications just can't handle it.

I learned it in a hard way .... :\

[Bill Hassell]

HP-UX is a standards-based system and uname must remain consistent with the standards. uname is defined as an 8-character (max) name as stated in the man page for hostname. Once a standard is changed, all sorts of problems with compatibility start showing up. Each man page documents the applicable standard(s) at the bottom.

NOTE: hostname is limited to 64 characters but nodename (the value reported by uname) is limited to 8 characters. BOTH can be set by editing the /etc/rc.conig.d/netconf file and entering separate values for HOSTNAME and NODENAME. If you must use a long hostname, then set NODENAME *and* HOSTNAME in the netconf file:

NODENAME="shorty"
HOSTNAME="shortstuffismyname"

Now you have both...but read this document:

http://www1.itrc.hp.com/service/cki/docDisplay.do?docLocale=en_US&docId=200000063236997


and then remember that all the sysadmins will have to handle any issues.

[Anupam Anshu_1]

As of now, HP-UX doesn't support Long host name.

I think in future releases, on HP-UX you will get Long Host name.

Regards,

Anupam Anshu

[doug hosking]

HP is very much aware of the desire/need to support longer hostnames. However, as noted in some of the previous responses, it's a lot harder than it sounds to make such changes and still keep compatibility with older software (especially since software stacks come from many different vendors, many of which have no relationship with HP).

You might find it informative to look at the patch description text for PHCO_31598.