gnome settings unexpected values

[Chris Murphy]

On Sep 25, 2013, at 11:52 AM, Matthias Clasen <mclasen at redhat.com> wrote:

> On Tue, 2013-09-24 at 23:11 -0600, Chris Murphy wrote:
>> https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3253801/IMG_20130924_185026.jpg
>> 
>> Settings>System: Details
>> 
>> a. Device name is showing hostnamectl transient name, not static name. I just tried this in F19 and it shows the static name. So this seems backwards now with Gnome 3.9.
> 
> The code thats showing the hostname is here:
> https://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-control-center/tree/shell/cc-hostname-entry.c
> It hasn't changed since it was introduced.

Yeah OK, it maybe systemd is now much more transient about the transient hostname. Because on reboot, transient hostname is missing, and Gnome shell doesn't use it anymore, it's using static. So just due to a reboot, Gnome shell Device name is different. It holds onto the transient hostname as long as that session is alive, apparently inheriting the transient name if it was present when gnome-shell launched.

But more hilarity ensues when I use Gnome shell to change Device name.  Static hostname is shifted to transient hostname, the entered name becomes the pretty name, and static has a - added to it in a way that makes no sense compared to the former name.


To keep it simple, try this:

1. 
# hostnamectl set-hostname local.localdomain
# reboot

Now I'm in the default state after installing Fedora 20. Gnome shell reports Device name as local.localdomain. And…

[root at local ~]# hostnamectl
   Static hostname: local.localdomain

2.
ssh root at local.local
[root at local ~]# 

No problems so far.

3.
In Gnome shell, change Device name from local.localdomain to gnome.localdomain and all hell breaks loose.

4.
hostnamectl reports:
[root at local ~]# hostnamectl
   Static hostname: gnome-localdomain
   Pretty hostname: gnome.localdomain
Transient hostname: local.localdomain

What a mess. And I can't ssh into either local.local or gnome.local. I have to use gnome-localdomain.local, confirmed by the journal:

gnome-localdomain avahi-daemon[345]: Server startup complete. Host name is gnome-localdomain.local. Local service c…09366.

So previously static name is displayed as local.localdomain, but if I change that to gnome.localdomain static becomes gnome-localdomain which then Avahi uses to set its hostname to gnome-localdomain.local. Messy. I think Gnome is either displaying things wrong or setting them wrong or both.



Chris Murphy