dns error messages in openbsd 3.1

glock19 · 06-24-2002, 12:21 PM

I get these error messages printed to the console repeatedly:

Code:

 Jun 20 20:28:39 fern sm-mta[7772]: unable to qualify my own domain name (fern) -- using short name
Jun 20 20:30:01 fern sm-msp-queue[18428]: My unqualified host name (fern) unknown; sleeping for retry
Jun 20 20:31:01 fern sm-msp-queue[18428]: unable to qualify my own domain name (fern) -- using short name

So what does all that mean? What is the problem? Do I *need* a fully qualified domain name, or can I just keep my machine name the way it is?

By the way, this is OpenBSD 3.1. Thanks for the help.

peter_robb · 06-24-2002, 02:02 PM

Sounds like you need to add your own ip address to the /etc/hosts file so that you can find yourself...

Regards,
Peter

finegan · 06-25-2002, 04:50 AM

technically OpenBSD gets annoyed if it doesn't have an FQDN, this isn't really going to cause many issues, and offhand I don't remember enough about open to set its hostname (although remembering how Slack is configure, its probably something as simple as /etc/HOSTNAME or /etc/hostname. You can give it a bogus one, or give it the domain name your ISP handed you which will make happy anything you log into that bothers to reverse DNS match you. The simplest way I can think of to find your ISP's domain name for you is to traceroute yourself by IP.

Cheers,

Finegan