Hostname Naming Compliance

[Danny Mayer]

Kevin Darcy wrote:

> But, as far as I can tell, there's no *practical* reason to disallow
> underscores, other than the fact that it may trip the standards-checking
> code of some _other_ piece of software. So, piece of software A
> disallows underscores because it's worried about causing a problem for
> piece of software B, and piece of software B keeps the restriction
> because it's worried about about causing a problem for piece of software
> C, and piece of software C keeps the restriction because it's worried
> about causing a problem for piece of software A.
> 

I had a case a year or two ago where a system had a host name with an
underscore in it and as a result it was unable to make a number of
connections. I don't remember the details any more but removing the
underscore solved the problem. It was running Windows which is why it
was allowed to get that hostname in the first place. It was easier for
me to point to the RFC's to get the sysadmins to change it than to
figure out what was causing it to trip up and fail. There are too many
failure paths.

Danny