Hi all,

Hoping someone can answer a question for me. Since I'm fairly new to Linux I'm sure it's an easy one and I just haven't managed to search for the right keywords yet.

Anyway, I am in the process of completing the setup on a server for my home running Rehat 9. I've configured SAMBA and have it connecting to my windows systems. When I log into my windows 2000 system the Linux system shows up as localhost , since this is one of two servers I'm setting up, one for the family files and one for me to learn and try new things on, (heaven forbid I screw up the family server and my wife loses all her pictures of Aunt mabel) I would like each to have seperate names. I browsed through all the Linux books I have and checked the web and cannot seem to find anything that specifically addresses this issue, or the one I have found so far doesn't seem to work. I was hoping one of you not so Newbies would take pity on me and answer this question before I pull all my hair out, (what little I have left that is).

Under network there is a lisitng under DNS for localhost and it also shows up in my hosts file, but when I change these names here I either get an error or windows will no longer connect.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Gordon

take a look at /etc/sysconfig/network and the hostname= option, if it's not there for some reason, then add a line to that file like this: HOSTNAME=hostname, or if that doesn't get it for you, then check the file /etc/samba/smb.conf and the "server string =" line.

ps: hair loss is a terrible thing (I guess...hehe)

also, 'man hostname'

OK I made the change to the network file and the server now appears on my Windows 2000 system as NEWNAME. However, when I log into the server as root the following error message pops up:

Could not lookup Internet address for NEWNAME. This will prevent gnome from operating correctly. It may be possible to corrrect the problem by adding NEWNAME to the file /etc/hosts.

Since I don't want to add a hostname to the host file but want to replace loclahost I changed the following line in the hosts file like this:

original
# Do not remove the following line, or various programs
# that require network functionality will fail.
127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost

new
# Do not remove the following line, or various programs
# that require network functionality will fail.
127.0.0.1 NEWNAME.localdomain NEWNAME

I then rebooted the server and when I logged into the server from my Windows 2000 system, (also rebooted after server came up), NEWNAME shows up correctly in network neighborhood and I've received no other error from Linux. So as far as I can tell that worked, (at least I'm not getting any error messages) and I just wanted to let everyone know in case they run across a similiar issue and to thank akaBeaVis and burntoutjoy for their help.

Gordon

You really need to put localhost back the way it was and instead use the ip address of the machine with "NEWNAME", the name and ip address of local host should not be messed with, there will unexpected and mysterious consequences. In other words, 10 to 1 you're not typing "http://127.0.0.1/index.html" into the browser connecting to the server, rather you are most likely typing a valid (at least) class c ip address such as 192.168.0.3, or 10.0.0.10, putting that ip address in the hosts file with "NEWNAME" next to it would be best.