Hostname > 8 characters in HPUX. Is it possible??

[David]

I have a Visualize C200 that I just installed HPUX 11.00 on. I initially
gave it a hostname greater than 8 characters. The machine would still boot,
I did notice it would fail "Setting the Hostname" during the bootup
checklist. The weird thing is that it would not let me login via CDE. It
would get me halfway there, then gave an error. I can login via Command
Line, but not via the GUI.

I changed the hostname to 8 characters and everything works fine now. I
have applied the latest general release patch bundle for 11.00 and I thought
that would fix it. Is this a limitation with HPUX? I know Solaris has no
problem with long hostnames. Can anyone shed some light on this topic.

Thanks.

[t...@mit.jyu.fi]

[NB: comp.sys.hp.hpux added to newsgroups and followups directed there only]

"David" <dguti...@hotmail.com> writes:

Yep, it's a limitation of HP-UX.

There are actually two distinct hostnames there, "internet name"
returned and set by 'hostname' which can be up to 64 characters,
and "uucp name" used by 'uname' which is limited to 8 characters.
Unfortunately a number of applications and subsystems use the latter
and some also assume they're same.

You can gleam that out by reading man pages, starting with uname(1)
and uname(2), but the net result is that you'd better stick with
eight letters in hostname if you want to avoid trouble.
(Using fully-qualified name as hostname is a possible exception,
but still it'd better differ from uucp name only in domain part.)

Incidentally, I didn't find this issue in HP-UX FAQ -- might be a good
idea to add something about it there.

--
Tapani Tarvainen

[Sean P O'Brien]

HP's uname is limited to 8 characters.

--
My favorite books:

HP-UX: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0130600814/petgeeks/
Sendmail: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1565922220/petgeeks/
Sed & Awk: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1565922255/petgeeks/
Perl: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596000278/petgeeks/
Solaris: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0072121432/petgeeks/

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