Hi,

I'm new to linux networking so please exuse me, if this is a basic question.

I am a consultant and travel from client to client. When I went to a particular client, I noticed my hostname was changed to "plwstellant.vivare.com", even though my /etc/sysconfig/network say its "localhost.localdomain".

Then when I logged in I got the gnome messaage saying "Could not look up internet address for plwstellant.vivare.com.

I fixed this problem, I believe by setting my /etc/hosts file to:

127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost plwstellant.vivare.com


First question is: Is this the right solution?

Second question is: If I go to another client's network do I have to keep updating the /etc/hosts file? Is there a better way?

thanks in advance, scott.

First lets take a look at why this happened to you. When you connected to this network you got an IP from their DHCP server, but in addition to that you also got sent a hostname to use.
In a file called ifcfg-eth0 (usually found in /etc/sysconfig/network directory) you have a line saying something about USEPEERDNS = Yes, this is what made your hostname change. Setting this to No would have made your linux ignore that hostname info from the DHCP.

I don't know exactly which file is making trouble for you here and now. You should not have to add the plwstellantvivare.com hostname in your hosts file. In this situation I would search the files in the /etc directory for instances of that hostname. As root user run the following command to do that.
This would show any lines that contain the word vivare.com along with what file it is in.
Post your findings here.