> > On the contrary. It is the users wanting hostnames > 8 > > characters who are grateful that the hostname and VM > > username need not match. > > The RFC which Grega mentioned says otherwise. > But at this point, we're arguing matters of taste.
The RFC was drafted in 1990, at a time when only the newest UNIX systems were capable of handling a hostname longer than 8 characters. There were many UNIX systems still in use which were limited in this way, and limited too, for that matter, to 13 character filenames. In fact, HP-UX couldn't reliably handle hostnames longer than 8 characters for another ten years after this RFC was drafted. Don't forget that you only got 6 characters for a DECNET node name, too, so sometimes it was advisable to limit IP hostnames even further! This is all ancient history, though relevant if your shop is still supporting machines old enough to be affected by these limitations. If so, I feel your pain. That said, host naming conventions are definitely a matter of taste. My personal preference is to anthropomorphize heavily, and assign CNAMEs if you want to name functions or services (i.e. a machine named 'wingnut' which is also known as 'ns3', 'smtp-outgoing', and 'www'). There are a lot of really outstanding reasons why I feel this way, but not everybody agrees. And that's okay, too. Some of the reasons for disagreeing are even reasonable ones. (@; ok r. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390
