From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: David Tolpin <dvd@davidashen.net>
Message-Id: <200403071349.i27DnZru079594@adat.davidashen.net>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] dhcp & metanames
In-Reply-To: <9068264d61698be89ea612b62212f186@plan9.bell-labs.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=KOI8-R
Date: Sun,  7 Mar 2004 17:49:35 +0400
Topicbox-Message-UUID: 1e348426-eacd-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025

> We ask dhcp for a hostname and a domain.  For the latter, dhcp's
> seem to differ in what they give back, i.e., the FQDN of the machine,
> the FQDN domain name that the machine is in, or that FQDN starting
> with a '.'.    Ipconfig tries to deal with the situation, clearly
> not well enough.  I'll try to do better but, if the server doesn't
> return the hostname, its hard to guess.  the dom=.davidashen.net 
> clearly indicates that we only got the domain and not the hostname.
> This is a effect of the spread of windows where the hostname is
> always in local storage and diskless boot is not really considered.

I have no Windows server in my network; the dhcp server sends domain
names.

I have only done that (the leading dot) because

http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/wiki/plan9/Mail_configuration/

in the last paragraph says:

  This name is generated from either the site enviroment var, or if that is not
  set, by appending the sending machines domain to its system name. The domain is
  picked up from the dom= attribute from /lib/ndb/local. The dom= attribut should
  be of the form dom=.machine.com (NB: leading dot).

If it is wrong, I'll change it to the fqdn.