Computer host name

[Robert Moskowitz]

Steve wrote:
> ---- Rick Stevens <ricks at nerd.com> wrote: 
>   
>> James Allsopp wrote:
>>     
>>> Hi,
>>> I've deactivated NetworkManager as it was interfering with my wireless
>>> networking, but since then my computer has been renamed to
>>> <ip-address>-bethere.co.uk, instead of localhost.localdomain. I've
>>> looked at /etc/hosts
>>> /etc/sysconfig/network
>>> and these are all set up as localhost.localdomain and the network card
>>> facing the internet is set up statically.
>>>
>>> Anyone have any ideas how to stop this happening?
>>>       
>> If you are running a DHCP client (and it looks like you are), the DHCP
>> server you're using gave your machine a host name.  That's pretty
>> normal.
>>     
>
> I don't think that this is true. At least not if you're running dhcp-4.0.0 as I am on my F9 system.
> $ rpm -qa | grep dhclient
> dhclient-4.0.0-22.fc9.x86_64
>
> I had thought the same thing but I recently spent some time sifting through the code to try to find where the host name is set. What I found is that it's not set by dhclient at all. It is set in the script 
> /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifup-post by the ipcalc command which is passed the IP address that the DHCP server gives your machine. Essentially this is a DNS lookup.
>
> If you know otherwise or if this is not always true, I'd be interested to hear about it.
>
>   
>> My guess is that your ISP is "bethere.co.uk", therefore they gave you
>> a hostname that reflects the IP address they gave you.  That's good,
>> generally, because that means they're probably maintaining a reverse DNS
>> entry for your IP address that points at you.
>>
>> You can ignore the host name the DHCP server gives you by editing the
>> DHCP client config on your machine and adding
>>
>> 	supercede host-name localhost.localdomain;
>>
>> to the lease clause.  See "man dhclient.conf" and "man dhcp-options".
>>     
>
> You can also put
>
> send host-name "my_host_name";
>
> in the dhclient.conf file or add
>
> DHCP_HOSTNAME="my_host_name"
>
> to /etc/sysconfig/network

I put this entry in my /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 (or 
eth1 or whatever) that also has the line:

NM-CONTROLLED=no