Re: Problem with Hostname

[Bob Proulx]

Benjamin Monjoie wrote:
>    I'm having an issue with hostname and "hostname --help" told me to report
>    anomalies to this e-mail address so here i am.

You have reached the home of GNU hostname.  But that probably isn't
the same hostname as on your Ubuntu system.

>    My problem is that hostname does not accept options anymore.
> ...
>    I'm running Ubuntu 9.04 and it's up to date. My hostname version
>    is 2.95 and my coreutils version is 6.10-6ubuntu1.

The hostname command is a little bit of a problem.  It isn't covered
by any of the standards.  It was introduced by BSD and so the BSD
version would be the most authoritative.  But there are variations.
And *BSD systems have modified it over the years.

The GNU hostname command is a very traditional command.  The
traditional Unix hostname doesn't take any options.  If an program
argument is provided it *sets* the hostname to that argument.  Meaning
that on a traditional Unix system running "hostname -f" will set the
hostname to "-f"!  That is the way that it has always been.  The GNU
version at least produces a warning that it is a invalid option.

But there is a different hostname command that some GNU/Linux
distributions have been using.  This command takes several options one
of which is the -f option.  This command that accepts the -f option is
*not* the GNU hostname command.  It is usually in its own 'hostname'
package.  You say that your version of hostname is 2.95 and if so then
that is the *other* hostname that is not the one from GNU coreutils.
Normally you would probably not be using the GNU hostname but would
instead be using that other one.

Did you recently compile coreutils from source and perhaps install a
local GNU Coreutils hostname binary that is now overriding the one
provided by your system?

What is the output of these commands?

  type -a hostname

  hostname --version

  dpkg -l hostname

  dpkg -L hostname | grep bin/hostname

I am expecting/hoping to see /bin/hostname is the _other_ hostname in
the system's hostname package and a /usr/local/bin/hostname that you
perhaps (?) just installed from a source compile of GNU Coreutils.

Please don't forget to reply-to-all to keep the bug-coreutils mailing
list in your follow-ups.

Bob