FacebookTwitter
Hatrack River Forum   
my profile login | search | faq | forum home

  next oldest topic   next newest topic
» Hatrack River Forum » Active Forums » Books, Films, Food and Culture » Hey fugu (or other Mac people)

   
Author Topic: Hey fugu (or other Mac people)
saxon75
Member
Member # 4589

 - posted      Profile for saxon75           Edit/Delete Post 
My iBook seems to have set its hostname to something including my office's domain without my asking it to. In fact, I'm reasonably sure that it's taken somebody else's hostname, since it has the guy's name in it. (To make it slightly more concrete, my computer has decided to name itself something like davelaptop.businessname.com, where dave is replaced with the guy's actual name and businessname with my company's actual domain name.) Why is it doing that, and how to I get it to stop?
Posts: 4534 | Registered: Jan 2003  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
fugu13
Member
Member # 2859

 - posted      Profile for fugu13   Email fugu13         Edit/Delete Post 
Where does it appear to be using this hostname?
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
saxon75
Member
Member # 4589

 - posted      Profile for saxon75           Edit/Delete Post 
In the System Preferences, under Sharing, it shows that hostname for all of the services I have enabled : Personal File Sharing (shows afp://davelaptop.businessname.com) and Personal Web Sharing (shows http://davelaptop.businessname.com and http://davelaptop.businessname.com/~mike/).

This is despite the fact that just above those settings I have the computer name actually set to "mikelaptop".

I also noticed that last night after I went home--and was away from my office wireless network--my computer was showing the correct name after I rebooted.

Posts: 4534 | Registered: Jan 2003  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
saxon75
Member
Member # 4589

 - posted      Profile for saxon75           Edit/Delete Post 
::bump::
Posts: 4534 | Registered: Jan 2003  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Alcon
Member
Member # 6645

 - posted      Profile for Alcon   Email Alcon         Edit/Delete Post 
Hmm... Thats very weird. What it should show is either your local network ip... 192.168.1.2 or something like that, or computername.local and/or localhost for some of them.

Have you tried closing down all your sharing options and starting them back up?

Posts: 3295 | Registered: Jun 2004  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
saxon75
Member
Member # 4589

 - posted      Profile for saxon75           Edit/Delete Post 
Yep.
Posts: 4534 | Registered: Jan 2003  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
fugu13
Member
Member # 2859

 - posted      Profile for fugu13   Email fugu13         Edit/Delete Post 
Best guess is you acquired that computer's IP through DNS at some point, and your computer then started thinking it had that computer's old hostname.

It is possible to set your hostname manually, but that would likely just cause hassle whenever you moved between networks.

Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
fugu13
Member
Member # 2859

 - posted      Profile for fugu13   Email fugu13         Edit/Delete Post 
Alcon -- no, it should show whatever hostname it has acquired through DNS, which is usually one of the ones you listed, but definitely not exclusively.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
saxon75
Member
Member # 4589

 - posted      Profile for saxon75           Edit/Delete Post 
Yeah, I know there's a file in the /etc somewhere--/etc/hosts or /etc/hostnames or something--that'll let me manually configure it, but I thought there might be some checkbox or something in the System Preferences that I was overlooking.

Thanks anyway. [Smile]

Posts: 4534 | Registered: Jan 2003  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
TomDavidson
Member
Member # 124

 - posted      Profile for TomDavidson   Email TomDavidson         Edit/Delete Post 
We've observed this behavior on many of our Macs using DHCP, too. They appear to do reverse lookups on the IP they're provided to determine their hostname, rather than the other way around. This is incredibly baffling, and I can only assume that it has something to do with the fact that we have Windows DHCP servers.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
fugu13
Member
Member # 2859

 - posted      Profile for fugu13   Email fugu13         Edit/Delete Post 
Uh, Tom, you have windows computers that choose their IP based on the hostname they're assigned?

Every computer does this sort of lookup, however I think the reason macs tend to have this sort of problem is due to some sort of interplay with Rendezvous and/or a local DNS cache.

Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
TomDavidson
Member
Member # 124

 - posted      Profile for TomDavidson   Email TomDavidson         Edit/Delete Post 
"Uh, Tom, you have windows computers that choose their IP based on the hostname they're assigned?"

No. [Smile]
What I mean is that when our Macs authenticate to a Macintosh DHCP server, we don't see this behavior. When they authenticate to our Windows DHCP servers, they often pull down the DNS name of the last Windows machine to authenticate to that IP.

Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
fugu13
Member
Member # 2859

 - posted      Profile for fugu13   Email fugu13         Edit/Delete Post 
I was referring to this section:

quote:
They appear to do reverse lookups on the IP they're provided to determine their hostname, rather than the other way around.
because it sure sounded like that's what you were sayin' [Wink] .

I'm pretty certain its what I suspect, even more so now in fact. You see, Rendezvous takes advantage of some esoteric capabilities in DNS that most DNS servers ignore/don't bother to implement or the like. Rendezvous sets up a DNS network without the need for a DNS server, even if one is there. This can create some interesting behaviors. I predict some unexpected DNS persistence occurs because of an interplay between Rendezvous and what MS's DNS server does, which apple, having control over the behavior of their DNS server, made sure didn't happen, and likely considered it more useful to get something in particular out of Rendezvous than to accomodate this particular quirk.

Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
TomDavidson
Member
Member # 124

 - posted      Profile for TomDavidson   Email TomDavidson         Edit/Delete Post 
The "other way 'round" I meant was having a computer, upon receiving an IP from DHCP, register its name with DNS. [Smile] Rather than checking DNS to figure out what its name should be.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
   

   Close Topic   Feature Topic   Move Topic   Delete Topic next oldest topic   next newest topic
 - Printer-friendly view of this topic
Hop To:


Contact Us | Hatrack River Home Page

Copyright © 2008 Hatrack River Enterprises Inc. All rights reserved.
Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.


Powered by Infopop Corporation
UBB.classic™ 6.7.2