On Wed, 2 Feb 2000, Patrick Greenwell wrote:
Not picking on you in particular, but isn't one of the greatest advantages to having DNS to offer *meaningful* names to machines(assuming anything other than a home network?)
Actually I try to name my machines around here the code name of the OS it's running if the intent of the machine is to have one of those running. chicago, greenriver, moab, etc. etc. I for a while was using "farm-type" names. My "core" Unix Server for my company is actually named "workhorse", which it is and will remain for quite a while. My firewall is "barbwire". I have up on this when I devolved to using names like yoke, saddle, etc. Although, now I think about it, I've got a machine over there that "ox" would be strangely appropriate. Nowadays, If it isn't an "os testing box", I use something I feel is appropriate. For example, I do picoBSD development on a box here called "oldblock". (You know, those picobsd boxes are just a chip of the old block").
It's nice to be able to go in to a company and see machines named "www1, www2, mx1, mx2" etc. which offer some indication as to their purpose rather than "maverick, foozlebutt, blarg", etc. which offers no such indication. I know it isn't as fun, but it certainly seems to be much more useful (IMO of course...)
At the ISP I do sysadmin for that's how we're going. There SHOULD be a cname for every one of those anyways. This being a small isp, the machines are really named "mail.mt.net" "www.mt.net" and (soon) "corp.mt.net". Traditional "small" services like DNS live on lewis.mt.net and clark.mt.net, which, along with our now retired news server, helena.mt.net which were based on local names. Although the best server name I've heard in a while is "bigbertha", which is a rather large solaris box at the local county government. Big Bertha was the name of one of the "famous" local women of ill repute from early helena history. Needless to say, this caused a stir, at least until the box showed up and when several people looked at it they said "Yep, big bertha". - Forrest W. Christian (forrestc@imach.com) KD7EHZ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- iMach, Ltd., P.O. Box 5749, Helena, MT 59604 http://www.imach.com Solutions for your high-tech problems. (406)-442-6648 ----------------------------------------------------------------------