On Mon, Apr 07, 2003 at 01:21:38PM +1000, George Michaelson wrote:

> I have /etc/myname defining my hostname.
> 
> but from the behaviours I see moving from cable at home, IETF and office,
> dhclient overrides hostname.

This may be a feature of your cable company, since I have a hostname
defined in /etc/myname and get an IP from my cable company with no
sendmail problems.

However, I'm not sure why you feel you need to override the
cable-supplied hostname. For me:

rs ~$ hostname
localhost.localdomain

rs ~$ cat /etc/myname
localhost.localdomain

I find this useful in some contexts wherein I don't wish to reveal who
I "really" am, and I can use it for local LAN purposes. However:

rs ~$ ifconfig ex0
ex0: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,NOTRAILERS,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu
1500
        capabilities=7<IP4CSUM,TCP4CSUM,UDP4CSUM>
        enabled=0
        address: 00:50:04:9a:ca:81
        media: Ethernet autoselect (10baseT)
        status: active
        inet 12.3.45.678 netmask 0xfffffc00
        [snip]

and:

rs ~$ host 12.3.45.678
678.45.3.12.IN-ADDR.ARPA domain name pointer ip12-3-45-678.ri.ri.cox.net

(IP munged, of course...)

So, I have a "real" internet IP address, and a "real" internet
hostname, in the sense that one can look up the one with the other
with a "real" DNS service.

Are you saying you want the "real" IP address, but wish to assign your
own made-up hostname to it? What does this gain you? Sometimes I wish
to override dhcp host-provided data, particularly DNS server IPs, and
then I use a 'prepend' statement in a /etc/dhclient.conf file. But
currently, I don't even have one of those files! Don't need it.

(And, I realize we're rapidly lurching off-topic...)

-- 
Bob Bernstein          M: Argument is an intellectual process.
                          Contradiction is just the automatic 
			  gainsaying of any statement the other 
			  person makes.

                       A: No it isn't.