On Sat, Sep 27, 2003 at 11:05:29PM -0500, Hal Ashburner wrote: > I believe the hostname of the computer is being set by the modem, as when I > disconected this computer from the modem and connected another, the name of the > other computer is imposed upon this one when I reconnect it. As far as I can see, this is something that wants fixing. And I don't know why that is happening, but my bet is that is somewhere in the network config, probably a line missing from the dhcp settings (which will be with the relevant interface setup probably -- see below).
> Only one computer is ever connected to the modem at one time. I'm not trying to > network many computers, just have a nice, fast & reliable net connection. > > The modem is something called a Motorola 'surfboard' and it claims on it's box that > it is a 'cable modem' (I'm being careful here as I am well out of my depth with > networking and hardware - this is both) Yep, it's a cable modem. > The laptop was certainly called 'debian' being the default on installation of the > debian distro. (You might want to change the hostname on your laptop to distinguish it from all the other default installs ... you have to modify /etc/hostname and /etc/hosts, and maybe /etc/mailname, and then run /etc/init.d/hostname.sh) > Gnoppix http://www.gnoppix.org (The Gnome based Knoppix) calls itself 'credativ' Ha. Gnoppix must have passed me by ... > > I believe these names are being stored in the cable modem or at a computer on the > Telstra side of things. Thus renaming this computer to whatever is being stored. My > shell now reads [EMAIL PROTECTED], if I can impose my will on what comes after the @ > I guess everything will fall into place. > > My idea was rather than renaming the conection in /etc/hosts everytime something > else gets booted plugged into the modem, to get RH9 to rename the connection when it > boots and connects it. So it's /etc/hosts will always be fine. Chapter 8 of the redhat manual: "Regardless of the type of network the computer is on, this file should contain a line specifying the IP address of the loopback device (127.0.0.1) as localhost.localdomain." So your original line was better than mine. > How did I set up the connection? I plugged the modem into the USB, installed BPA > login and from there it 'just worked' no I don't know much about it. Hmm neither do I. I'm sure google does though ... does anyone else? > /etc/hosts > The 'Link' lines were added by myself after much googling, they work in as much as > they make the error messages go away on login to Gnome, which makes M & D more > comfortable. > They came from a script that was designed to update the IP address if it isn't > static. Possibly a sub-optimal solution... Ok ... > there is no /etc/network/interfaces on this RH9 distro, nor is there an > /etc/hostname. My mistake. Then you'll need /etc/sysconfig/networking/ifcfg-eth0 or similar. (is the usb modem on eth0, anyone? And where do you set the hostname again?) Post your config files so we can get help from someone who is familiar with redhat. > I'm going to try changing /etc/sysconfig/networking/ifcfg-lo > commenting out NAME=loopback > inserting NAME="Ashburner" That's lo for loopback interface. From chapter 8 of the redhat manual: "Never edit the loopback interface script, /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-lo, by hand. Doing so can prevent the system from operating correctly." You'd better change that back ... > So we'll see if that goes well...(just a little scary this kind of stuff, when you > have no clue, reminds me of the time I set this thing up with eth0 as a 'trusted > device' then connected it to the cable modem, D'Oh!!!) :) I'm sure we can manage something of that calibre again ;-) It would be best to post ifcfg-* and /etc/hosts (in its current form). Patrick Lesslie -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
