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I'm working with a fresh Debian Squeeze install from Linode, and it looks like hostname behaves differently (from lenny) in a way that makes certain other packages unhappy. Viz:

clements@debian:/tmp/npm$ hostname -A
li228-113.members.linode.com 
clements@debian:/tmp/npm$ hostname -f
hostname: Name or service not known
clements@debian:/tmp/npm$

This behavior differs from an older (lenny) installation, where hostname -f does not signal an error. Reading the man page suggests to me that squeeze isn't a big fan of the -f option since machines can have multiple fqdns. That's fine with me, but packages like make-ssl-cert get crabby about it:

Setting up ssl-cert (1.0.28) ...
hostname: Name or service not known
make-ssl-cert: Could not get FQDN, using "debian".
make-ssl-cert: You may want to fix your /etc/hosts and/or DNS setup and run
make-ssl-cert: make-ssl-cert generate-default-snakeoil --force-overwrite
make-ssl-cert: again.

I'm hesitant to edit /etc/hosts; this wasn't required on my lenny VPS, and I have the feeling that it shouldn't be required here either.

Any suggestions greatly appreciated.

John Clements
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1 Answers1

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If you use FQDNFQDN (Fully Qualified Domain Name), then FQDN should be before short name in /etc/hosts. Correct

127.0.1.1       ubuntu-1010-server-01.local ubuntu-1010-server-01

wrong;

127.0.1.1       ubuntu-1010-server-01 ubuntu-1010-server-01.local

or run:

sudo make-ssl-cert generate-default-snakeoil --force-overwrite
ooshro
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  • can you shed some light on the change from lenny to squeeze? Why was this not required in lenny? Specifically, my lenny /etc/hosts has only the localhost line, and everything works fine. – John Clements Feb 26 '11 at 19:16
  • attach /etc/hosts to question. If you use FQDN, then FQDN should be before short name. – ooshro Feb 26 '11 at 19:19
  • I still feel like there's many things I don't understand going on here--other packages that provide this functionality--but adding the line you suggest certainly had the desired effect. Many thanks. – John Clements Mar 15 '11 at 19:18
  • ran into this - needed to add fqdn, and aws's funky hostname to the hosts to resolve. – tsykoduk Sep 09 '11 at 17:30