3

I have a number of Hardy hosts that seem to get an invalid hostname placed in their /etc/hosts during the installation process.

There's a line in /etc/hosts on a freshly built, unmodified host that looks like this 

127.0.1.1  hostname.subdomain.domain.subdomain.domain hostname.subdomain.domain

The first hostname in that list is invalid.

This causes problems when programs run hostname -f or an equivalent and get "hostname.subdomain.domain.subdomain.domain" which is an invalid, unresolvable hostname.

uname -n returns "hostname.subdomain.domain"

On Lucid hosts, the entries look like this:

127.0.1.1  hostname.subdomain.domain hostname

which is pretty much what I was expecting and would like to happen.

Both our Hardy and Lucid machines are built via pxeboot and pressed files. I've scanned through our preseed config for:

  • Anything that looks it might change the hostname
  • Anything that might change /etc/hosts

I've not found anything.

It is possible for me to manipulate /etc/hosts en masse via puppet, but I would much prefer to understand the cause of the problem and fix it at source.

Jorge Castro
  • 73,717
bleach
  • 51

1 Answers1

1

I can think of two places to look:

If these are client installations using the casper live cd environment, it sounds like this is set within that environment. Grab either a cd or an iso image, take the casper/initrd.lz file and uncompress it:

lzma -dc -S .lz initrd.lz | cpio -imvd --no-absolute-filenames

Most configuration is set in scripts/casper-bottom. You may find a clue in there.

See here for more details on how to manipulate a CD:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCDCustomization

If not, I'd next go looking into the Ubiquity installer, I reckon you can look at the files and code if you boot a Live CD. If this is done at install time, Ubiquity is where it would be done.

roadmr
  • 34,802