UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hello all

I'm new to this site and I have to say that ,it is just awesome. I was able to get most of my questions answered by reading the archives.

I've been a UNIX programmer for a while now but new to administration.
I just installed SunOS 5.9 on my desktop ( i86pc) . Everything seems OK ,
except for hostname. When I type hostname , I get "unknown" . To fix this
I did the following.

1) Modified /etc/hosts with the following contents

127.0.0.1 localhost
198.168.10.20 mars mars.xyz.com loghost

initially this was

127.0.0.1 localhost
198.168.10.20 unknown # assigned by DHCP

2) Modified /etc/hostname.elx10 with the following contents

mars

initially this file had no contents .

3) Modified /etc/netmasks with something like this.

198.168.10.0 255.255.255.0

saved all the above files and rebooted the system using init 6 .

After the system came up , I typed hostname and I still get "unknown" .The
contents of /etc/hosts now looks like

127.0.0.1 localhost
198.168.10.20 unknown mars.xyz.com loghost

mars string was replaced by unknown in /etc/hosts .

I was expecting to see mars as the hostname . Am I missing something here .

Thanks
luft.

You can't assign it that way - if you look at the original entry it shows that the IP is assigned by DHCP.

Check out Sunsolve's - manually set hostname of DHCP client

(Undo all the changes you made before starting)

Hello RTM

Firstly , thanks a lot for your quick reply.The solution worked like a charm.
A couple of followup questions though.

1) When the system boots , I get the following message followed by a warning.

Configuring IPV4 interface elx10
Starting DHCP on Primary interface
Warning : elx10 Link Failure

The system comes up and seems to work fine. Can this warning cause any
potential issues later. I'll eventually be installing Oracle10g on it .

2) When I ping this solaris system (mars.acme.int) from a different pc
(Windows 2000 Professional ) using ping mars.acme.int , I get
unknown host message. To solve this I added the following entry in
C:\winnt\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

10.96.9.221 mars.acme.int

After this, I was able to ping . My question here is , is there a way to
ping successfully without modifying hosts file on a PC.

Thanks
luft .

You have to put in an entry in your DNS server.