webserver hostname/domainname on a private lan??

[KernyKat]

This is my setup:

I have a domain name whose A record points to my public IP address at home. (for argument's sake: example.com)
My router does NAT, and is set to forward port 80 requests to my gentoo box ("Virtual Server") on 10.0.0.11.

My question is: where should I enter 'example.com' and what should I set as hostnames and domain names on my LAN? Considering there is NAT going on...

The login prompt of gentoo quotes itself as "pelican.unknown_domain", I have HOSTNAME="pelican" in /etc/onf.d/hostname, and /etc/conf.d/domainname does not exist yet. Should this be set to 'example.com'?

and what is the diffference between /etc/conf.d/domainname and /etc/dnsdomainname ?

My router refuses to be given a hostname without a period in it, and has no setting for domain name, thus it's hostname is set as "jellyfish.example.com", is this correct? Maybe this is where I should put just "example.com" ?

I have apache's ServerName set to example.com too.

I might be getting confused between DNS and NIS domains... I havn't quite figured out what the use of NIS is yet, and where my computers even get their hostnames from... all machines are set to DHCP, and my router(dhcp server) is set to give the same MAC-to-IP every time(fixed hosts), and at the same time, somehow hostnames come into it? On my windows machines... is the domain name setting there NIS, DNS, or somehting else? Then come hosts files... Gah.

Very confusing...

[sloof3]

In theory you could set your hostnames and domainnames to whatever you want on your LAN. Won't effect anyone on the internet.

If you own 'example.com' then set that as your domain in /etc/conf.d/domainname
That is the preferred place to set it. /etc/dnsdomainname is deprecated.

Set your router to: hostname.example.com.
"hostname" being whatever you want to call it. That way if it takes example.com as the domain to hand out in DHCP. Then your clients will all be in the example.com domain.
You can override that in /etc/conf.d/domainname as you'll see when you edit it.

Forget about NIS, I have never needed to know what it does exactly or why I should use it. The people that need to know about it, know about it.

With Apache, best set your ServerName to whatever you set your DNS A record to.

With Windows: DHCP should set the domain. Again set the hostname to whatever you want.

As for hostfiles that's where you can setup hostname <--> IP maps if you don't already have a DNS server. By default your Linux/Windows looks there first to see if there is already a map between hostname and IP. In otherwords set up your hostname <--> IP maps in here if you don't run a DNS server and want: ping jellyfish.example.com to work.

-sloof3