Ok, time to come out of the woodwork again. (dam splinters).

I think I know what your asking, but I could be wrong :) (Eric theres some
stuff for you in here as well).

What you really need to know is that torus.dorm.utexas.edu is really just an
alias.  Thats all it is, and all aliases resolve to the original name.  An
nslookup
can show how this works.
--
curly.cc.utexas.edu% nslookup torus.dorm.utexas.edu
Server:  curly.cc.utexas.edu
Address:  128.83.42.1

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:    resnet-59-9.dorm.utexas.edu
Address:  129.116.59.9
Aliases:  torus.dorm.utexas.edu
--
-- reverse lookup
--
curly.cc.utexas.edu% nslookup 129.116.59.9
Server:  curly.cc.utexas.edu
Address:  128.83.42.1

Name:    resnet-59-9.dorm.utexas.edu
Address:  129.116.59.9
--

Now thats basically what all the programs do (with gethostbyname calls and
the like).    You can lookup the aliases in a program if you want, but most
dont because they dont need to/want to.  So if you want your machine to show
up as torus.dorm.utexas.edu on slappy.cs or something, no can do since they
do a reverse lookup and it resolves to the resnet-?? address.  It has
nothing to do with any host files on your machine.  The hosts file (win or
unix) can be used to setup your own aliases to machines on THAT machine and
some dns lookup programs (havent checked Redhat or Slackware) will resolve
the hosts file first.
For example, If you typed in www.microsoft.com to be 209.83.2.145 (the ip
address of www.theonion.com), then everytime someone typed in
www.microsoft.com they would go to theonion.  Reverse works the same way (if
the resolver works correctly).  So you could setup any machine you
administer to do this. BUT it does not help you much with dynamic addresses.
Thus I beleive you are stuck in the same boat (the one with that Leonardo
Dicaprio guy hanging of the front of it).

PS . If Ive mad to many errors in my email, just say so ... I have been at
work a long time this week.

Dave Barrett
HumanCode



-----Original Message-----
From: Chien-Yu Chen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: siglinux <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Saturday, July 04, 1998 1:53 AM
Subject: a follow-up on the alias question


>well, my first question was for linking back to localhost.
>I am modifying this program that, I think it uses /etc/hosts when it link
>back to localhost.
>however, now I need the program to link to other host, for instance. if I
>telnet to other machine and do a who, I see myself coming from resnet-59-9
>
>is there a way such that when I telnet outside my box by using the alias?
>thanks again...
>
>Momma always said: life is like
>      `.           a box of 95;
>    .__ o __.      you never know
>    |__/|\__|      if you're gonna
>    /\ < > /\      crash ...
>
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