hostname(5)                                              hostname(5)


       NAME
             hostname - host name resolution description

       DESCRIPTION
             Hostnames are domains, where a domain is a hierarchical, dot-
             separated list of subdomains.  For example, the machine
             laiter, in the Lachman subdomain of the COM subdomain of the
             ARPANET would be represented as
                   laiter.Lachman.COM
             (with no trailing dot).

             Hostnames are often used with network client and server
             programs, which must generally translate the name to an
             address for use.  The name-to-address translation is generally
             performed by the library routine gethostbyname [see
             gethostent(3N)].

             Hostnames are resolved by the Internet name resolver in the
             following fashion:

                   If the name consists of a single component (contains no
                   dot), and if the environment variable HOSTALIASES is set
                   to the name of a file, that file is searched for an
                   string matching the input hostname.  The file should
                   consist of lines made up of two white-space separated
                   strings, the first of which is the hostname alias, and
                   the second of which is the complete hostname to be
                   substituted for that alias.  If a case-sensitive match
                   is found between the hostname to be resolved and the
                   first field of a line in the file, the substituted name
                   is looked up with no further processing.

                   If the input name ends with a trailing dot, the trailing
                   dot is removed, and the remaining name is looked up with
                   no further processing.

                   If the input name does not end with a trailing dot, it
                   is looked up in the local domain and its parent domains
                   until either a match is found or fewer than two
                   components of the local domain remain.  For example, in
                   the domain CHI.Lachman.COM, the name flaime.STG will be
                   checked first as flaime.STG.CHI.Lachman.COM and then as
                   flaime.STG.Lachman.COM.  flaime.STG.COM will not be
                   tried, as the there is only one component remaining from
                   the local domain.



                           Copyright 1994 Novell, Inc.               Page 1

      hostname(5)                                              hostname(5)


      REFERENCES
            gethostent(3N), named(1M), resolv.conf(4)
            RFC1035













































                          Copyright 1994 Novell, Inc.               Page 2