Linux Format forums

[Guest]

On my system with Mandrake 10.1 installed, at the shell prompt it displays a prompt of user1@localhost.

I would like to change the hostname so that a name is displayed instead of localhost. I tried a few things, via the Mandrake graphic controls, but seemed to end up with a misconfigured system.

The machine has a static ip address:

% hostname -i
192.168.0.102

I have now edited the /etc/hosts file and added a line so it now looks like:
127.0.0.1 localhost
192.168.0.102 pc2

This seems to work ok, , I get a prompt of user1@pc2, except that when I now boot I get an error message to do with postfix about not being a fully qualified domain name and I need to edit /etc/postfix/main.cf.

Can anyone explain this error and what I should do (it scrolls off of the boot screen so quickly I can't easily read all the information).

Have I changed the name the right way? Is there something else I need to do?

[nelz]

You need a domain name as well as the host name, something like

[M0PHP]

Yes, what he said

Also, if you don't use postfix (a mail transport agent used for sending email (not required if you just use webmail or your ISP's POP/IMAP mail service)) then you can safely turn it off at startup. And all messages at startup should be sent to /var/log/messages for future reference

[Guest]

Thank-you for the replies. I didn't know I could define my own FQDN, I guess I can as it is the local 192.168... address. I had thought that all domain names were things you had to pay for.

[nelz]

You only have to pay to register an Internet domain name. On your own LAN, you are in charge and can do what you like.

If it makes you feel better, feel free to charge yourself for a local domain name
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Unix is user-friendly. It's just very selective about who it's friends are.