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HOSTNAME(7)            Miscellaneous Information Manual            HOSTNAME(7)

NAME
     hostname - host name resolution description

DESCRIPTION
     Hostnames are domains.  A domain is a hierarchical, dot-separated list of
     subdomains.  For example, the machine "monet", in the "Berkeley"
     subdomain of the "EDU" subdomain of the Internet Domain Name System would
     be represented as

           monet.Berkeley.EDU

     (with no trailing dot).

     Hostnames are often used with network client and server programs, which
     must generally translate the name to an address for use.  (This task is
     usually performed by the library routine gethostbyname(3).) The default
     method for resolving hostnames by the Internet name resolver is to follow
     RFC 1535's security recommendations.  Actions can be taken by the
     administrator to override these recommendations and to have the resolver
     behave the same as earlier, non-RFC 1535 resolvers.

     The default method (using RFC 1535 guidelines) follows:

     If the name consists of a single component, i.e. contains no dot, and if
     the environment variable "HOSTALIASES" is set to the name of a file, that
     file is searched for a string matching the input hostname.  The file
     should consist of lines made up of two strings separated by white-space,
     the first of which is the hostname alias, and the second of which is the
     complete hostname to be substituted for that alias.  If a case-
     insensitive match is found between the hostname to be resolved and the
     first field of a line in the file, the substituted name is looked up with
     no further processing.

     If there is at least one dot in the name, then the name is first tried
     "as-is".  The number of dots to cause this action is configurable by
     setting the threshold using the "ndots" option in /etc/resolv.conf
     (default: 1).  If the name ends with a dot, the trailing dot is removed,
     and the remaining name is looked up (regardless of the setting of the
     ndots option), without further processing.

     If the input name does not end with a trailing dot, it is looked up by
     searching through a list of domains until a match is found.  If neither
     the search option in the /etc/resolv.conf file or the "LOCALDOMAIN"
     environment variable is used, then the search list of domains contains
     only the full domain specified by the domain option (in /etc/resolv.conf)
     or the domain used in the local hostname.  For example, if the "domain"
     option is set to CS.Berkeley.EDU, then only CS.Berkeley.EDU will be in
     the search list, and this will be the only domain appended to the partial
     hostname.  For example, if "lithium" is the name to be resolved, this
     would make lithium.CS.Berkeley.EDU the only name to be tried using the
     search list.

     If the search option is used in /etc/resolv.conf or the environment
     variable "LOCALDOMAIN" is set by the user, then the search list will
     include what is set by these methods.  For example, if the "search"
     option contained

           CS.Berkeley.EDU CChem.Berkeley.EDU Berkeley.EDU

     then the partial hostname (e.g., "lithium") will be tried with each
     domain name appended (in the same order specified); the resulting
     hostnames that would be tried are:

           lithium.CS.Berkeley.EDU
           lithium.CChem.Berkeley.EDU
           lithium.Berkeley.EDU

     The environment variable "LOCALDOMAIN" overrides the "search" and
     "domain" options, and if both search and domain options are present in
     the resolver configuration file, then only the last one listed is used
     (see resolv.conf(5)).

     If the name was not previously tried "as-is" (i.e., it fell below the
     "ndots" threshold or did not contain a dot), then the name as originally
     provided is attempted.

ENVIRONMENT
     LOCALDOMAIN         Affects domains appended to partial hostnames.

     HOSTALIASES         Name of file containing (host alias, full hostname)
                         pairs.

FILES
     /etc/resolv.conf    See resolv.conf(5).

SEE ALSO
     gethostbyname(3), resolv.conf(5), mailaddr(7)

NetBSD 10.99                   February 16, 1994                  NetBSD 10.99