The Official LQ Poll Series continues. This time we want to know: How do you come up with your naming scheme for Linux hostnames?

(Note that multiple responses for different schemes used at home, at work, for servers, etc., is acceptable).

--jeremy

My wife and I are huge Disney fans, so for all of our home computers (all Linux with one OpenBSD laptop), they are named after Disney characters. Our file/web server is named walt, in honor of Walt Disney. The current file/web server is a Dell PowerEdge T110 II (running Debian 8.3, with two 1TB drives in a RAID1 array), and is the fifth system to bear that name here.

I sometimes use names from anime or manga. Problem with that is the deer-in-the-headlight look I get from people when I tell them to use the Kirito server. They can't even pronounce it, let alone have a clue where the name comes from. Other than that, I use boring technical names. Dev01, prod03, arg02, etc. The latter helps us know what the purpose of the server is just by the name.

I call them tux1, tux2 and so on.

Home? I go with anime as well...personal use just has to please who's using it.

Work? Will usually go with state/city/building/floor (if needed), application abbreviation (if single app such as mail, time, etc.), followed by number. So for a mail server in Mobile, Alabama at a 'main office' on the fourth floor, and the third server in a set/cluster/whatever, it'd be "ALMOBMOF04MAIL03". Chattanooga, TN at a single-site company (all in one building/floor), consolidated server? TNCHAMOSVR01. Time server 2 in Atlanta, GA at branch office #1922? GAATLB1922TIME02.

If a client tells me otherwise, I go with what they say. Otherwise, if we're managing a server/servers for someone, we need to know where it is and what it does quickly. One look at a dashboard can tell you a lot if you name things well. Granted, it's not 'user-friendly', but Samba and other such services can have different names. The hostnames are typically 'under the hood'.

For the home network we've used Tolkien LOTR place names: gondor, moria, imladris, etc. for workstations and hobbit for a
little Asus Eee notebook.

Mine are guitar brands or models that I have (or had): fender, strat, gibson, lespaul, maton, vantage, rick(enbacker), etc.

Mine are naughty military acronyms: fubar, snafu, pita plus some others like dofus.

No particular reason, I just like the sound of them.

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Motorcycle and biker terms.

Like skuzbucket or animal_mother.

I use fruit or birds.

noble gases; and as those are exhausted, elements of similar phonetics

I started off with anime characters - specifically ones designed by Nobuteru Yuuki - but the only one of them left over is my main server "deedlit".

The others are named after Disney characters. Most are named after the Disney Princess lineup because they have an easy to remember numerical order for static IP addresses (snow, cinderella, aurora, ariel, belle, jasmine, pocahontas, mulan, tiana, rapunzel, merida, anna, elsa).

My little zoo: cheetah, whale, lion, tiger, anaconda, etc.

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Following on from a lifelong (69 years) interest in astronomy and space travel, and having worked at the Royal Observatory Edinburgh and UKIRT on Mauna Kea, I use star names, like my own moniker tarazed (= gamma Aquilae), cursa, alkaid, vega, menkalinan and so on. And made up names as well, like belexeuli for my main production machine.

I'm the Reverend Bishop who lives in a house with cats, so of course, my network had to be the CAThedral, with related names following: abbey, friar, etc.