From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Aug 31 01:15:55 2007 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1B29F16A418 for ; Fri, 31 Aug 2007 01:15:55 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from jeffrey@goldmark.org) Received: from out2.smtp.messagingengine.com (out2.smtp.messagingengine.com [66.111.4.26]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E8B8A13C461 for ; Fri, 31 Aug 2007 01:15:54 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from jeffrey@goldmark.org) Received: from compute2.internal (compute2.internal [10.202.2.42]) by out1.messagingengine.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 876ED2716A; Thu, 30 Aug 2007 21:14:54 -0400 (EDT) Received: from heartbeat2.messagingengine.com ([10.202.2.161]) by compute2.internal (MEProxy); Thu, 30 Aug 2007 21:14:59 -0400 X-Sasl-enc: Y7kbaCONnnGFscTBqfF6qGhO7orBLzvSnmii/6SO40MZ 1188522893 Received: from [10.1.10.136] (n114.ewd.goldmark.org [72.64.118.114]) by mail.messagingengine.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 58643BE25; Thu, 30 Aug 2007 21:14:53 -0400 (EDT) In-Reply-To: <809721.13094.qm@web58110.mail.re3.yahoo.com> References: <809721.13094.qm@web58110.mail.re3.yahoo.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v752.2) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed Message-Id: <43F1E2AB-E5D0-4B64-8539-44C35557D965@goldmark.org> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: Jeffrey Goldberg Date: Thu, 30 Aug 2007 20:14:50 -0500 To: L Goodwin X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.752.2) Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD Hostname Question - Whats The Proper Way X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2007 01:15:55 -0000 On Aug 30, 2007, at 6:29 PM, L Goodwin wrote: > Do you mean avoid giving any machines on your LAN the > same hostname as the (hosted) web server, mail server > and ftp server? I don't even know what the hostname > for the web server is. The mail and ftp servers are > "mail..com" and "ftp..com", so > I guess I would not want to use these. I have a minimum of three names for any machine visible to the outside world. (1) I have the internal name that I give a box. A few years ago, I asked my daughter for help naming machines, and we ended up with a Harry Potter theme. So my primary external server (which has the most names) is dobby.ewd.goldmark.org, but that name isn't visible to the world. It's not secret, but I have no intention of having anything out side my local network needed to refer to it that way. (And in the Harry Potter scheme, my three headed firewall is named fluffy.) (2) But there is another name it must also have. I have a tiny block of IP addresses which all had PTR records associated with them like static-72-64-118-118.dllstx.fios.verizon.net. It took more than two hours on the phone to Verizon to get those changed, so it was something I only ever wanted to do once, so I have names like n114.ewd.goldmark.org n115.ewd.goldmark.org and so on. So dobby is also known of as n118.ewd.goldmark.org (3) Now dobby runs a couple of public servers. It runs Apache as www.goldmark.org and about half a dozen vhosts. It also also runs a mailserver (postfix) with mailman primarily visible under the name lists.shepard-families.org. So recapping. One is my quasi-private name for the box itself. And that is what hostname knows. Two is a name corresponding the the reverse lookup of any public IP address it might have. There may be several of these if the machine had multiple IP addresses. And three are "role" names for all of the services it runs. This way, if I want to move a service to a different host, that is relatively easy. -j -- Jeffrey Goldberg http://www.goldmark.org/jeff/