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HOSTNAME(7)		Miscellaneous Information Manual	   HOSTNAME(7)

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  monet,  in	 the  Berkeley
       subdomain of the	EDU subdomain of the Internet would be represented as

	     monet.Berkeley.EDU

       (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.  (This func-
       tion is generally performed by the library  routine  gethostbyname(3).)
       Hostnames  are  resolved	by the Internet	name resolver in the following
       fashion.

       If the name consists of a single	component, i.e., contains no dot,  and
       if the environment variable "HOSTALIASES" is set	to the name of a file,
       that  file is searched for any 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-insensitive	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  re-
       moved, 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 by
       searching through a list	of domains until a match is  found.   The  de-
       fault  search list includes first the local domain, then	its parent do-
       mains with at least 2 name components (longest first).  For example, in
       the domain CS.Berkeley.EDU, the	name  lithium.CChem  will  be  checked
       first as	lithium.CChem.CS.Berkeley.EDU and then as lithium.CChem.Berke-
       ley.EDU.	  Lithium.CChem.EDU  will  not	be tried, as there is only one
       component remaining from	the local domain.   The	 search	 path  can  be
       changed	from  the  default  by	a  system-wide configuration file (see
       resolver(5)).

SEE ALSO
       gethostbyname(3), resolver(5)

HISTORY
       Hostname	appeared in 4.2BSD.

FreeBSD	15.0		       December	25, 2013		   HOSTNAME(7)

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<https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=hostname&sektion=7&manpath=FreeBSD+15.0-RELEASE+and+Ports>

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