UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

i read that if i issue :

cat /etc/sysconfig/network > textfile

i will be able to determine the hostname of the server that my linux workstation is connected to.

but there are several other lines outputted that i do not need. i just need the hostname part.

is there any other unix command i can use? i tried hostname, hostid but they give the name of the workstation, not the server's name.

thanks for any leads

What exactly are, for you, the differences between "host name" and "server name"?

"hostname" will give you the machines host name. "hostname -f" will give you the machines FQDN (but this is Linux only). If you mean the DNS entry for an IP used by the machine, you could use "dig -x <IP>" to get that.

thanks pludi for quick reply.

i have to monitor several linux workstations connected to a linux server.

i intend to issue cron jobs in each of the workstations to get the processes running and output the results to a textfile daily.

so for every 30 minutes, cron job something like :
0,30 * * * * * ... ps c -FC "firefox-bin,soffice.bin, ..." >> textfile.txt

the textfile.txt is to contain the workstation's hostname as part of the filename which i can get by issuing hostname at the workstation prompt.

at the end of the day, the workstation has to copy that daily file to a subdirectory in the server. another cron job that i think will need the server's hostname this time. something like :

cp textfile.txt serverhostname/assigned/directory/
(or ssh, ftp, scp whichever will be applicable, please suggest.)

at end of the day, i should have 10 daily files coming from each of the 10 workstations at the serverhostname/assigned/directory/

as each of the textfile.txt contains the name of the workstation it came from, i can write a program to track which workstations are used more often and at what peak times for the processes being monitored from these log files.

this is for the high school administrators/lab manager who want to monitor what the computers in their internet lab are being used for and at what times.

i was worried that if the serverhostname is changed by the sysad at the server, my cron tasks and scripts will not run if i hardcode the serverhostname, thus my need to find it out from wherever (e.g. cat /etc/sysconfig/network > something.txt).

thanks, just a newbie here.
better leads how to accomplish above will be appreciated.

(i also have another problem -- how to make the ps command accept the "watched executables" from a csv file that can later be expanded instead of hardcoding each of the additional executables in the ps statement)