From: roehling@debian.org 
  
 Hi Richard, 
  
 * Richard Lewis  [2025-10-18 
 * 15:53]: 
 >I think the missing bit of explanation in this thread is: why would 
 >anyone know "apollo" but not "appollo.example.com"? both of these 
 >strings are written by the admin in /etc/hosts which is a file that has 
 >probably never been changed (and probably doesnt tell you anything much 
 >about reaching the system externally) 
 Good point. 
  
 The hostname ("apollo") can be configured in the kernel. The libc has 
 gethostname() and sethostname() functions to configure it, and there is 
 a hostname tool to do so from the shell. Usually, the hostname is stored 
 in /etc/hostname and set at boot time. 
  
 AFAIK the name is treated as an opaque string, so while Tradition tells 
 you to set the unqualified hostname, there is no technical reason why 
 you cannot set the fully qualified "apollo.example.com" as hostname. And 
 some people do that; I guess it is one of the contradicting traditions 
 Simon talked about elsethread. 
  
 >ie - what is the actual problem these settings are trying to solve? 
 A lot of software assumes that it can always resolve the local hostname 
 to an IP address (and vice versa look up the associated hostname of an 
 assigned IP address). That remains true even if you set the hostname 
 fully-qualified, so unless you have a permanent, reliable connection to 
 a DNS server that serves your domain, you probably want the /etc/hosts 
 entry; otherwise you may encounter random timeouts while interacting 
 with network daemons on your host. 
  
  
 Cheers 
 Timo 
  
 -- 
 €€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€   €€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€ 
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 €€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€   €€€ Timo R€€hlin 
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 €€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€ 
  
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 --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05 
  * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)