Re: Hostname questions

["Jean-Christian Imbeault" <jean_christian@example.com>]

>From: Jake Morrison <jake_morrison@example.com>
>
>Under RedHat, the network configuration stuff is a rats nest
>of shell scripts that do things "automatically".

Tell me about it! ;)

I really appreciate all this basic knowledge tlug is showering upon me :) I 
understand DNS and the basics but I just figure out why/how all these 
different files are needed. It's getting clearer though.

>The scripts call /bin/hostname to tell the system what the hostname
>is and write the hostname to a file, /etc/HOSTNAME. RedHat doesn't
>use an /etc/hostname file.

Ok but . . . I have added a HOSTNAME=linux line to /etc/sysconfig/network 
and rebooted but my /etc/HOSTNAME file is empty. Though "echo $HOSTNAME" 
gives the proper answer.

>RedHat gets the DNS domain name from the resolver, which is backed
>by /etc/hosts and DNS (as configured by /etc/host.conf,
>/etc/nsswitch.conf, /etc/resolv.conf).
>It is not strictly necessary to have the host/domain listed in the
>/etc/hosts file if they are in DNS. It is better to do so, however,
>to provide a fallback in case DNS is unreachable.

But in my case my machine is on a private network. So it has no DNS entry 
and no domain name. Does that mean it does not need an entry in it's own 
/etc/hosts file?

So far it seems that if I don't at least put the IP of my machine in 
/etc/hosts I have problems. Apache won't start and Gnome gives me an error 
about not being able to resolv my name or something.

>If you want things like nslookup to work properly, you will probably
>want to set up /etc/resolv.conf with a bit more information than
>RedHad gives it by default.

I gave it the IP of our local DNS server (which knows nothing, it's just a 
forwarder).

>As for Apache....you can probably figure out what the problem is
>by starting it manually from the command line. The "Apache" way
>to do this is via the "apachectl" utility (i.e. "apachectl start".
>I don't know if apachectl is included with RedHat. I always build
>from source to avoid these kinds of hassles.....

Yeah, no apachectl when using the rpm. And I don't know if it's RH's fault 
or Apache but the only message I get for a failed startup is in 
/var/log/messages and it's

Jul 17 10:49:00 linux httpd: httpd startup failed

Useful isn't it?

Jc

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