hostname and domain name server.

[Andrew Cherenson]

In article <1990Dec16.212236.6857 at ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz> russell at ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz (Russell J Fulton;ccc032u) writes:
>We are running 3.3.1 on a 4D/240s although the problems with installing the 
>dns occurred when we were on 3.2.
>
>When we installed the domain name server (named) we found that we had to 
>change our hostname to be a fully qualified internet address (or at least that
>is what the SGI documentation said).
>i.e ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz. Previously hostname had been set to ccu1.

If you don't specify your domain name in /usr/etc/resolv.conf, then using
the fully-qualified domain name in /etc/sys_id is a Good Idea.

>Recently I installed the elm mail package (Which is GREAT BTW.) I had troubles
>with return addresses for local mail. After posting a note to comp.mail.elm
>and receiving a prompt response it became clear that the problem was that 
>elm expected hostname to return the first part of the name. When I responded
>that we had to have it with a full domain name because our name sever would 
>not work the reply was that 'Your dns is broken'.

If you mean the gethostname(2) system call, it returns the name in /etc/sys_id,
which is the fully-qualified name in your case. If you mean the hostname(1) 
command, it returns whatever gethostname says.  Use "hostname -s" to strip 
off the domain name.