Bug in Graphical Network Configuration???

[Tim]

On Thu, 2006-08-24 at 22:24 +0800, Deepak Shrestha wrote:
> After that I used the /etc/hosts and changed the settings and changed
> my hostname from previous already.

The hosts file doesn't set your hostname, it just associates DNS names
and IP addresses.  Elsewhere, the hostname is set.

> Now my ISP's DNS was down and today they gave me a new DNS address.
> This time I used again the graphical tool to set the new DNS address.
> Reactivated the network card. What happened was my hostname was
> changed from current name to previous one without my knowledge. I
> didn't notice the problem till all other windows machines were unable
> to reach the webpage hosted on it.

Sounds like yet another issue.  Those other PCs don't use its hosts file
to find it, they use their own or a DNS server.  You can blank out your
hosts file, and it won't affect other PCs from finding it.

What do you mean by they gave you a new "DNS address", though?  They
changed your hostname, IP address, told you to use different IP
addresses to access their DNS servers at, or something else?

> I had to reedit the /etc/hosts file to change my hostname and
> reactivate the network card to fix the problem.
> 
> This made me think that "system-config-network" doesn't rely on the
> /etc/hosts files. It must have its own backup file which get rewritten
> in /etc/hosts file after some modification

# locate hosts |grep /etc
/etc/hosts
/etc/sysconfig/networking/profiles/default/hosts
...[snip]...

It's been a while since I played with dialup, but I think the idea was,
during dialup to use one as a template, and modify the /etc/hosts while
connected, then put it back as it was after disconnection.  I can
remember that malarkey with the /etc/resolv.conf file, but I can't
really remember what changes were made to hosts files.

If you edit, and restart the network, out of sequence, you might have a
bit of confusion.

-- 
(Currently running FC4, occasionally trying FC5.)

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