Host Names

In Chapter 11, “Connecting to the Local Area Network,” we described how it is easier to manage a system by creating an alias for a particular service. This allows us to move the service from one host to another easily without reconfiguring all the clients should the need arise. We are following that advice here and creating all host entries using this convention. Even if you haven't implemented a centralized naming service, it's worth doing this, since you will only need to alter the hosts file should a machine alter and not lots of different configuration files scattered around the system. The entries from the hosts file, complete with the new aliases, are shown below:

hydrogen# grep timeserver /etc/hosts
192.168.22.1 hydrogen  h  timeserver
hydrogen#