This is probably the stupidest question ever asked on a newsgroup about Linux, but here goes:

How do I "name" my machine?

Every time I am doing something network related I read about using the servername or machine name or IP.

Since I use a router and my IP changes with DHCP every time and I am not running a DNS server how can I assign a name to this machine?

The only entry I have in /etc/hosts is

127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost

Am I just not understanding the basics here?

Could someone point me in the right direction?

Thanks

You can name it whatever you want or need it to be for a server etc...Just do a netconfig or edit the HOSTNAME, NETWORKING and hosts files and change it to what you need...

easiest way to just name your machine without editing by hand and from the command line would be this:

# hostname name-you-want

Sorry.

I still don't get it.

If I do:

hostname xxxxx

I then cannot ping that name, even from the same system.

And in my past experience, if I alter the hosts file to anything other than the default:

127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost

I get an error about no localhost listing on boot.

Are we talking about just adding an alias to the hosts file? Is that what the hostname command is supposed to do?

although the name of the machine is usually the same as it's network name, it's not law, so isn't inter-related

in order to be able to ping the name you need to add the entry to /etc/hosts, but that's for a network, which is where the difference comes in, you only need to ping your own machine if you're on a network, so you don;t need to worry about that if you're only on a standalone box. 127.0.0.1 is always localhost, as that's an internal, pretend network, but i guess you might get away with adding the host name after it, not really that useful tho, as far as i can see.

ok, so reading your post again i get a little bit the wrong end of the stick.. but i hope some of that is useful. the hostname is network based, nothing to do with 127.0.0.1

Well, it's easier if you can do a netconfig and it'll prompt for answers, but not ever distro has it. It depends on what you are wanting to do. I assume in KDE the network config could work just as well. Your dynamic connection shouldn't matter if you are only configuring the "cosmetic" name for your machine. The 127.0.0.1 is in ever distros files. That IP allows the box to work as a loopback device so that you don't have to have a network. I guess i'm confused as to what exactly you want it used for? Let us know...Now i'm conflustered.. LOL

Hmmm. Still confused myself

Using the command hostname, what do you use that name for?

You can just add an extra entry to /etc/hosts with your IPand name you want can't you?

But then if you have another machine you want to connect to it with and you want to use your machine name instead of IP don't you have to have a hosts file on the new machine with the name of the first machine in it?

And you can't do this with DHCP assigned addresses can you?

Basically the ultimate goal is just so that I can ssh or ftp to servername and not IP. I guess that's my long term goal here.

Am I making sense at this point?

Thanks.

Ok. I think I have figured it out somewhat.

If I use a static IP address on this machine and put an extra entry into /etc/hosts like:

myipaddress myhostname alias

then it works and I can ping that name and alias.

BUT

1. The hostname command will change the hostname only temporarily. Upon reboot it will revert to whatever is in the /etc/hosts file. So I still don't know why you would use the command hostname.

2. What do you do if you have a DHCP assigned address instead of a static one?

Thanks.

try editing /etc/sysconfig/network

The actualy hostname of a machine is configured by the /etc/HOSTNAME file. what the /etc/hosts file basically is a precursor to DNS. You can read up on the details by doing a man hosts and man hostname

as someone said before, the easiest thing to try is a
# hostname thenameyouwanthere

but i have had systems where that hasnt worked. if you have a mainstream distro, there are almost always GUI tools to configure this. even slackware has a GUI for it (a rarity in slackware). netconf, netconfig are things you might be trying.

Failing that, try linuxconf on redhat or yast2 on suse

Thanks to all for the answers.

I think I understand it now.