[ydl-gen] setting the hostname in YDL 4.1

[Christopher Murtagh]

On 7/15/06, Nathan Moore <nmoore at physics.umn.edu> wrote:
> Yes, I've heard from my sysadmin that when my machine sends out an
> initial DHCP address request, the (DNS server?)

No, DHCP requests go to DHCP servers. It is not related to DNS at all.

> What I don't understand is how to tell our DNS server
> what I'd like the machine to be called.

 You can't, only the person who controls DNS can do this (usually a LAN admin).

> I get the impression from our sysadmin the this naming is automatic and
> depends on information that I somehow send to the DNS server.

 It is extremely unlikely that you send anything to a DNS server. DNS
is not something that you want multiple people configuring changing.
What would happen if two people wanted the name 'foobar.domain.com'?
Who would win?

> In the same vein, if I have no control over my machine's hostname,
> why does one step of the YDL install process involve "setting the
> hostname"?  Is this step a placebo to make me feel like I have more
> control?

 Not at all. This is so the machine knows what it will call itself.
Most of the time, it can determine this via a reverse DNS lookup as
well.

 Imagine a child being born and saying "hey, what's my name?". Only
the authoritive person (in this case, the parent) can  tell the child
what her name is. If she decides to change her name, she simply can't
just say "today, my name is foobar", she has to go to the authorities
and have it changed. Human networking is less efficient than the
computer networking. We have several layers and now standard way to
propagate changes. If you change your name, you have to tell everyone
'Hey, my name has changed'. In the computer world, DNS takes care of
this (actually, it doesn't track changes, but it tells people where to
find hostname 'foobar').

Cheers,

Chris




> Thanks so much for your reply!
>
>
>
> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
> Nathan Moore
> Physics
> Winona State University
> AIM:nmoorewsu
>
>
> On Jul 15, 2006, at 1:49 PM, Christopher Murtagh wrote:
>
> > On 7/14/06, Nathan Moore <nmoore at physics.umn.edu> wrote:
> >> I want the machine to have hostname "runner" under the domainname
> >> "workstations.winona.edu", so that from within the campus network I
> >> should be able to either,
> >>         ssh runner
> >> or
> >>         ssh runner.workstations.winona.edu,
> >> both of which presently fail
> >
> > Hi Nathan,
> >
> > There seems to be a bit of a misunderstanding as to how hostnames
> > work and propagate. You cannot do what you are trying to do by
> > configuring your machine. If you want this to work, you need to
> > contact the local LAN admin responsible for DNS. Setting it in your
> > /etc/hosts file or changing your hostname will only be seen by that
> > machine. No other machine has access to either of those, so these
> > changes will not propagate on the net. This is the precise purpose for
> > DNS.
> >
> > Hope this helps.
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > Chris
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