Unknown hostname for Solaris 10 DHCP client
Written by: Mark Wilson
When I installed Solaris 10 x86, my computer thought its hostname was unknown. Aside from being annoying, this seemed to be causing a few issues, so I set about trying to set it to a name of my choice.
Using the uname -S <em>hostname</em> command set the hostname for me but this information didn’t persist on reboot. A bit of googling turned up various references to editing /etc/init.d/network so that it read /etc/nodename and set the hostname accordingly (as well as a script to set the hostname), but my system didn’t have an /etc/nodename file.
I understood that /etc/nodename should contain my computer’s name, but didn’t know if any other settings were required (I later found Jeff Hunter’s TCP/IP quick configuration guide, which confirmed that the file just contains the computer’s name – in my case laptop3).
It turns out that these hacks are for Solaris 8/9 – Solaris 10 is quite happy to set the hostname based on the contents of /etc/nodename. Once I had created /etc/nodename and rebooted, /etc/hosts read:
#
# Internet host table
#
127.0.0.1 localhost
192.168.7.106 laptop3 # Added by DHCP
and the computer was no longer anonymous!
Posted: 19:10 on Tuesday 10 January 2006 under Solaris.
Comments: 10
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Comment from Anonymous
Time: Wednesday 18 January 2006, 1:05
I had a similar problem getting the hostname set using DHCP. After a lot of reading, snooping, and pleading with my sysadmin, I finally found this solution:
http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/816-4554/6maoq020t?a=view
Please note that step 4 is crucial
Alan Thompson
Comment from Grant Croker
Time: Monday 12 March 2007, 14:09
Alan,
I think the URL you meant was http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/816-4554/6maoq020m?a=view which is the page before the one you linked to.
regards
grant
Comment from Abhishek Srivastava
Time: Monday 20 August 2007, 9:31
Thank you very much for the quick fix solution. This has helped my configure my x86 machine a lot faster than what i expected.
- Abhishek
Comment from Andrew Thompson
Time: Thursday 29 November 2007, 12:01
Just take a look at this guys tag cloud – Solaris 10 hosted in VMware Fusion and I get the goods from a guy who advertises himself as a “Microsoft Exchange Server, Active Directory and the Windows platform” specialist. Thanks Mark (and Google:), drop us a line if you’re ever down-under.
Comment from Mark Wilson
Time: Thursday 29 November 2007, 15:00
Andrew – glad you found it useful… and even though it’s a sunny day in England, I’d rather be down under right now 
Mark
Comment from Solarisnovis
Time: Thursday 8 May 2008, 10:37
Mark – I have installed Solaris 10 on a spark box, and I am now trying to get email and calendar to work from the company’s exchange server. No such luck. I have been playing arounf with various settings, but cannot git it to successfully logon using my LDAP/domain password, I am sure you have experience & Doco regarding this…
Comment from Jennifer Nick
Time: Thursday 1 January 2009, 15:28
Does this similar issue happen for the sparc version also ?
Comment from Pradp
Time: Tuesday 23 February 2010, 20:04
thanks buddy, i had this issue and almost gave up changing the numerous files but nothing got me to work. Your post did the trick.
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