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/etc/hosts setup--3 questions

Hi.

1) I'm not sure which IP address to use when I list my machine name in /etc/hosts, particularly after reading:

Quote:

By the w]ay, Arnt Gulbrandsen <agulbra@nvg.unit.no> says that 127.0.0.1 # should NEVER be named with the name of the machine. It causes problems # for some (stupid) programs, irc and reputedly talk. :^)

Here's what I have now:

Code:

root@eagleswing:~# hostname

eagleswing

root@eagleswing:~# cat /etc/HOSTNAME

eagleswing.5binc

root@eagleswing:~# cat /etc/hosts

#

# hosts                This file describes a number of hostname-to-address

#                mappings for the TCP/IP subsystem.  It is mostly

#                used at boot time, when no name servers are running.

#                On small systems, this file can be used instead of a

#                "named" name server.  Just add the names, addresses

#                and any aliases to this file...

#

# By the way, Arnt Gulbrandsen <agulbra@nvg.unit.no> says that 127.0.0.1

# should NEVER be named with the name of the machine.  It causes problems

# for some (stupid) programs, irc and reputedly talk. :^)

#



# For loopbacking.

127.0.0.1                localhost





# End of hosts.



root@eagleswing:~#

2) Also, I want to connect my computers at home & I'm not sure how to go about it. I found the following link for my belkin router: http://192.168.2.1/

I'm not certain how to include my router in /etc/hosts so I can use it to link my PCs as stated above. I was thinking of writing (see above link):

192.168.2.1 localbelkin

Will this work & is it proper?

3) Do I need to make use of any other IP addresses at this link? What are the WAN IP & Default Gateway addresses used for? I am going to be serving documents & running scripts on Apache.

Edit: when I run hostname -f I get: "Unknown host".

Assuming your machine has a fixed address in the 192.168.2.x range, not dynamic (it does not use DHCP to get its address from a DHCP server such as the router) then a suitable entry for it in /etc/hosts would be (replace 45 with the actual value)

Code:

192.168.2.45 eagleswing.5binc eagleswing
"I want to connect my computers at home" ... to the Internet? ... to each other? Assuming to the Internet then they do not need to be able to resolve a name to the router's IP address but they do need to have the router's IP address configured as their default gateway.
.
The WAN IP is the router's IP address on the Internet.

The Default Gateway address is the address on the LAN that computers will send IP traffic to when they do not know where else to send it; the assumption is that the default gateway will know. In your scenario the default gateway is your router and it will forward IP traffic for the Internet to your ISP.

Regards "serving documents & running scripts on Apache", is that to service clients on the Internet or on the LAN?

hostname -f is looking in /etc/hosts for the fully qualified domain name and not finding it. Should work with the suggested hosts entry above.