Hostname madness?

[xadmin]

Hello all,

I am installing 10.4 server onto an xserve. I did this on another xserve and experienced an issue with the hostname, so I’d like to do this one right.

I have an issue where the hostname ends up being “myserver.local” as opposed to “myserver.myintranet.domain” which I what I would like to have.

Couple questions:

during the install, am I to put the FQDN in the name fields during the install, or simply the local machine name?

I read that the hostname is set to automatic as soon as the install is complete and that the machine gets its name from a reverse DNS query (or dhcp). My DNS server is a Windows Server box, I will not be running DNS on either xserve.

The first machine I installed 10.4 on, intended to be an OD master, had the .local hostname issue (typing hostname into a shell produced myserver.local) and furthermore, when creating home directories on the server for users, the location of the home folder was along the lines of:

afp://10.0.0.1/Users

and in the detailed version at the top of the WGM window..

afp://10.0.0.1/Users/username
/Network/Servers/xservername.myintranet.domain.local/Volumes/RAIDdisk/

now call me crazy, but I don’t think that the server name should have .local tacked on the end like that! Not to mention the fact that it refers to the afp server by IP address and not DNS name.

Can anyone offer any insight into these issues?

Thank you.

EDIT: will changing the hostname from AUTOMATIC in the /etc/hostconfig file to my desired FQDN hostname help me at all?

EDIT 2: I do have reverse DNS entries for both servers in my DNS server (windows server), do I have to enter my DNS server address anywhere specific on my 10.4 machine?

[xadmin]

Thank you for the insight.

Is there any harm in setting the hostname in the /etc/hostconfig file?

I’ve tried the changeip command a couple time without success, didn’t seem to want to change the hostname…

[Author]

Posts