On Fri, 2 Feb 2007, James K. Lowden wrote:

> Jan Danielsson wrote:
> >    I always thought that the first part of a FQDN is the hostname. i.e.
> > 
> >    c98hr92hr8.d934ryhn982.zorg.com
> > 
> >    ...means that the FQDN is c98hr92hr8.d934ryhn982.zorg.com and the
> > hostname is merely "c98hr92hr8".
> > 
> >    Is this correct? I have seen people claim that "hostname" should be
> > set to (in this case) c98hr92hr8.d934ryhn982.zorg.com.
> 
> You're right and they're right.  :-)
> 
> The hostname is the first element in the FQDN; in a.b.c.d, "a" is the host
> and "b.c.d" is the domain.  
> 
> But you have to tell the machine, somehow, what its hostname is and what
> domain it's in.  In NetBSD, that's done in one fell swoop by setting the
> hostname to the FQDN.  

Also, Jan, have a look at the hostname -s option.


  Jeremy C. Reed