Re: Fedora Present and Future: a Fedora.next 2014 Update (Part I, “Why?”)

[Bill Davidsen]

Tim wrote:
> Allegedly, on or about 21 March 2014, Powell, Michael sent:
>> The system name or hostname is important to networking; so, I can see
>> why it's under networking, but I believe your frustration is more
>> related to the lack of guidance and quality than anything else.
>
> Well, actually, for a lot of people, the system name is simply what they
> want to call the computer.  The computer may not even be on a network,
> at all.  There's certainly cause for having a process of naming the
> computer.
>
> For LANs, the hostname may not actually be set on the computer.  A DHCP
> server may dole out IPs and hostnames, or simply dole out hostnames and
> a DNS lookup discovers what name is given to that IP.  In that scenario
> there's some logic to using the network configuration to fill in the
> name.  Though there's still the reverse case, where I want to name a
> computer, and let the rest of the network find out what my name is, from
> me (well, /this/ computer, not actually me, personally).
>
This is useful in a large site, but also in virtual machines. I have a single VM 
image which works thus:
  - set MAC on startup
  - DHCP returns IP and name from MAC
  - rc.local uses the name to start services on the VM,
    dhcp, mail, nntp, dns, pop, etc.
  - can include dedicated user machine or app,
    network mounting other partitions as needed.

-- 
Bill Davidsen <davidsen at tmr.com>
   "We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from
the machinations of the wicked."  - from Slashdot