Date: Fri, 21 Jul 2000 04:59:24 -0300 From: "Augusto Bott" <augusto.bott@via-rs.net> To: <freebsd-newbies@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: hostname on standalone machine Message-ID: <00fe01bff2e9$97676260$0201040a@ig> References: <Pine.GSO.4.05.10007211234350.26378-100000@cat.cs.mu.OZ.AU>
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Hi Andrew! And gurus, forgive me if I'm saying somethig wrong.... > connection to the outside world is via a dialup PPP link with dynamic IP > address. I have not much knowledge of networking. Once I had a LAN which each one of the machines could dial, but I arranged things up so the freebsd box would dial, nice and easy. It doesn't really matter your LAN ip, because the PPP interface sets one for you, and fixes it's routing tables, so, if you 're on a single machine which it's only connection is a ppp dial-up link, you are praticly done. > I am not sure as to what problems may be caused by my selecting a > hostname, which, as far as the internet is concerned, does not "really" > exist (i.e. is not on any DNS). And, to the outside world, doesn't really matters (depending on your ISP, you may have to "belong" (set yours) to their domain). BTW, are you running your own DNS (may be caching lookups?)? > 1. edit "/etc/rc.conf" to set my hostname to, say, "araby.an.org.au". Is this domain from your ISP? Even if it isn't, MAY be no problem... > 2. edit host.conf to be > hosts > bind meaning, it it'll first look on the local table (hosts) , then ask the nameserver. Before item number 4, you may have forgotten about /etc/resolv.conf I don't quite remember mine or have fBSD reachable at this time to quote to you, anyways: nameserver 200.250.46.130 # your ISP's name server IP nameserver 127.0.0.1 # if you run your own... etc... domain some.domain.au # will look for completion, read bellow!!! You may have more than one nameserver, list them in your preferred lookup order... It's good to tell your machine an external nameserver, otherwise you'll probably won't resolve names... (duh...) What the hell is completion: when you are in a lan, and your machine KNOWS you are in such domain, like, "an.org.au", you type "www" in your browser, he asks you system whose IP address it is, it does not find any match, looking in the order told him in host.conf and the way told in resolv.conf. It knows it's domain so it tries to match www + an.org.au, got that? > 3. edit hosts to read (from the handbook) > 127.0.0.1 localhost.an.org.au localhost > 127.0.0.1 localhost.an.org.au. > ^ > Why the need for the repetition, and why the dot? You may have aliases, what's the problem? The dot? Well, the dot means your typing an "absolute name", which means: the box will not try "Completion" (mencioned above) > > 10.0.0.1 araby.an.org.au araby > 10.0.0.1 araby.an.org.au. > ^^^^^^^^ > What does this IP address mean? Wouldn't it be better to assign > these names to 127.0.0.1 also, so that network data doesn't go The 10.x.x.x is a private network, reserved for nets non connected to the internet... (if I'm not completely wrong) which means, your router won't send them trough the serial line > through the serial link unnecessarily? (because the info in "hosts" > is used only for my machine to send data out to he world, right?) Wrong, the information contained in the "hosts" file is for your machine only. It's intended for fast machine lookups on a rather stable ip environment (and small, because you have to keep up to date on EVERY machine on your net, otherwise some will resolve names to wrong addresses...) > And from my understanding, that's it, provided PPP is set up correctly? Setting up PPP is another issue... Good luck! [[]]s Augusto Bott To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message
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