Mark Burgess wrote: > On Sun, 2005-11-06 at 14:47 -0800, David Masterson wrote: >> Mark Burgess wrote: >>>> Regarding short_hostname, on my system '/bin/hostname' returns the >>>> FQDN. If I try using $(host), I just get the FQDN. Is that normal? >>>> That's why I'm using my own variable. >>> >>> This is normal if you have fully qualified names returned by your >>> hostname lookup, which is not something I recommend. >> >> There is a discussion going on here about the merits of FQDN vs. >> simple hostname. Would you care to elaborate on your reasons for >> not recommending FQDN in hostname lookup? >> > > Just as a matter of principle that you don't mix different kinds of > information. It is the principle of "normalization" or "normal forms" > in database theory. The hostname is one item of information, the > domain name is another. You should be able to change and manage them > independently of one another. If you always store the domain name as > the host identity then you have made it very hard to separate those > two pieces of information, and have made relative information > absolute. > It is also possible to record information that is incorrect and does > not match information in DNS this way. Again. normalization says this > is a bad idea.
Hmm. I'm in the simple hostname camp, but IT is more in the FQDN camp. I need to bring your explanation down a little -- can you give an example of where FQDN caused problems? Is it just an esoteric "ease of use" issue or does it have consequences? Consider establishing a company policy where all NIS servers are "nis[0-9]". At the company level, these systems have an FQDN of "nis[0-9].x.com". However, group NIS servers have an FQDN of "nis[0-9].y.x.com" (where y is the group). Obviously, you could have multiple "nis1" hosts in your organization. Is this a good company policy? -- David Masterson VMware, Inc. Palo Alto, CA _______________________________________________ Help-cfengine mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-cfengine
