What are hostname and dnsdomainname?

StringCheesian · l33t Joined: 21 Oct 2003 Posts: 887

Are they just a server thing, or are they important for home networks to? I'm on a home network using DHCP. (it's working fine, I'm just curious)

Does it matter what they're set to?

Monkeywrench · Posted: Sat Sep 25, 2004 4:25 am Post subject:

They work for home networks too. They aren't necessarily important, but you should still set them. /etc/hostname is what the computer in named, and I treat /etc/dnsdomainname as the name of the (sub)network. For example: my computer is named 'electret' and is on the 'mind.net' network. So, the full name of my computer would be: electret.mind.net. Other computers on my home LAN are also on the 'mind.net' network, just with a different hostname.

So yeah, it's a good idea to set both of them. But no, it doesn't really matter what they are.
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nobspangle · Posted: Sat Sep 25, 2004 7:37 am Post subject:

It does sort of matter what they are for a home network. If you are connected to the Internet you should use a domain name with a tld no available on the Internet like .local or .home but not .net or .com or anything like that. Unless of course you own the domain name in which case you can do what you like with it.