script to update /etc/hosts
 

Please let me first apologise if this is the wrong place to post this, but I am not a regular on this forum so this seemed a good place to me.

I have a machine connected via ADSL with a dynamic ip address. I want to include a little scriplet which will update my dynamic ip address in /etc/hosts.
Right now my /etc/host has this entry: 127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost
I want the scriptlet (which I was thinking to include it as part of /etc/ppp/ip-up ) to add a second line containing ipaddress hostname.mydomain hostname.
I found this so far, which retrieves my dynamic ip address:
exec /sbin/ifconfig ppp0 | grep 'inet addr' | awk '{print $2}' | sed - e "s/.*://
which if I execute in shell will give me the ip address. Could someone help me finish this off?

Thanks a lot

PS I promise that I will study the vi, sed....etc manuals in detail, but for now I just need this script to work..... please..!!! ..

Quick and dirty hint - use echo
echo "`exec /sbin/ifconfig ppp0 | grep 'inet addr' | awk '{print $2}' | sed -e s/.*://` hostname domain" >> /etc/hosts

but then of course you'll screw up the file if that runs more than once.... either keep a backup copy that you can copy to /etc/hosts and append each time or similar

Yeah that's true, it only runs once, for the second time it will screw up the file, thanks acid for pointing it out

no problem. any petty detail, no matter how pointless... i'm your man. :)

heads up, acid :p . I just thought of a quick solution and it would be to delete /etc/hosts and then create it

thanks guys, this did the trick. I still can't get aolserver to see the new ipaddress and hostname, but this is a different matter altogether.

all the best

ahh but then you're deleting the file and then overwriting it regardless.... remove the rm and you'd never know the difference

thanks a lot
 

All done, aolserver serving what is supposed to serve on the right port, script works a treat.

Thank you once again