Linux – On Ubuntu 10.04, should /etc/hostname contain the server’s FQDN

hostnamelinuxUbuntu

On Ubuntu 10.04, should /etc/hostname contain the server's fully-qualified domain name?

Best Answer

No, just the hostname portion. According to Ubuntu's man pages, /etc/hostname should contain only the hostname portion of the hostname, not the FQDN:

THE FQDN

You can’t change the FQDN (as returned by hostname --fqdn) or the DNS domain name (as returned by dnsdomainname) with this command. The FQDN of the system is the name that the resolver(3) returns for the host name.

Technically: The FQDN is the name gethostbyname(2) returns for the host name returned by gethostname(2). The DNS domain name is the part after the first dot.

Therefore it depends on the configuration (usually in /etc/host.conf) how you can change it. Usually (if the hosts file is parsed before DNS or NIS) you can change it in /etc/hosts.

NOTES

The address families hostname tries when looking up the FQDN, aliases and network addresses of the host are determined by the configuration of your resolver. For instance, on GNU Libc systems, the resolver can be instructed to try IPv6 lookups first by using the inet6 option in /etc/resolv.conf.

FILES

/etc/hosts /etc/hostname This file should only contain domain name and not the full FQDN.

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