hostname(5)							File Formats Manual						       hostname(5)

NAME

       hostname - Host name resolution description

DESCRIPTION

       Host names are domains, where 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 would be represented as follows: monet.Berkeley.EDU

       Notice that there is no trailing dot.

       Host names are often used with network client and server programs, which must generally translate the name to an  address  for  use.  (This
       function  is  generally	performed by the gethostbyname() function.) Host names are resolved by the Internet name resolver in the following
       fashion.

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

       If the input name ends with a trailing dot, the trailing dot is removed, and the remaining name is looked up with no 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.  The
       default	search list includes first the local domain, then its parent domains with at least 2 name components (longest first). For example,
       in  the	domain	CS.Berkeley.EDU,  the  name  lithium.CChem  will  be  checked  first  as   lithium.CChem.CS.Berkeley.EDU   and	 then	as
       lithium.CChem.Berkeley.EDU. Lithium.CChem.EDU will not be tried, as there is only one component remaining from the local domain. The search
       path can be changed from the default by a system-wide configuration file.

SEE ALSO

       Functions: gethostbyname(3)

       Commands: named(8)

																       hostname(5)