hostname on a non-NIS machine

[Barry Margolin]

In article <6EB92C6B088BD311A42F00902785F3F66CD672 at kidsny1.mtvnodn.com>,
Jangalwa, Raj <Raj.Jangalwa at nickonline.com> wrote:
>a) What does the "forwarders" mean in /etc/named.conf file??  I know its for
>"forwarder-only" servers, but is it just for the servers who forwards the
>resolvers quesries to the machine specified in them?? or am i missing
>something.

It tells that name server that whenever it doesn't have the answer to a
query in its memory, it should forward it to the specified server instead
of trying to find the answer itself (by working its way down from the root
servers).  Usually this is used on nameservers that are behind a firewall
that's blocking them from querying other servers on the Internet.

>b) I am not running NIS on this box (duh...) does it make sense to keep my
>hostname as "machinename.domainname.com" or should it be just "machinename".
>I mean when i type 'hostname', should it say "machinename.domainname.com" or
>just "machinename". Will this things effect DNS or its quesries in any
>way???

We have our systems configured to be just the machinename and it works OK.
It has no effect on the DNS resolver; it gets all its configuration
information from /etc/resolv.conf.

-- 
Barry Margolin, barmar at genuity.net
Genuity, Burlington, MA
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