Bug 1094068

Created attachment 892340 [details]
screenshot of network configuration page

Description of problem: I've attached a screenshot of what I see on the Network Configuration spoke. The prompt is "Please use the desktop environment's tools for customizing your network configuration. You can set the hostname here." I attempt to set a hostname with a space in the middle, and Anaconda warns me that "Hostname is not valid: Hostnames can only contain" alphanumerics, periods, and hyphens. However, my desktop environment's (GNOME's) tools allow me to set hostnames with all sorts of funky characters, and so does systemd's hostnamectl tool. I think Anaconda should be consistent with these tools.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): 20.25.15-1.fc20


How reproducible: Always


Steps to Reproduce:
1. Boot Fedora 20 Live Desktop
2. Visit the Network Configuration spoke in Anaconda
3. Attempt to enter a hostname with a space or other special character
4. Visit the Details or Sharing panel in Settings (gnome-control-center)
5. Attempt to enter a hostname with a space or special character

Actual results: The hostname with a space is accepted by Settings, but not by anaconda.


Expected results: It'd be nice if Anaconda either permitted the same hostnames as GNOME and systemd do, or else did not allow accessing the network spoke at all when running in the live environment (since its sole purpose is to set the hostname). The user may never discover that hostnames may have spaces if Anaconda reports otherwise, and should not be expected to understand the distinction between different types of hostname.


Additional info: GNOME uses hostnamed to store a pretty hostname, which is translated into a form without spaces or special characters before it is set or stored in /etc/hostname. This is documented at [1]. Anaconda should do this as well, to be consistent with systemd and GNOME. It is displayed to the user in a few places (besides in Settings, the sidebar in nautilus) so it does matter (just a little bit: severity -> low).

[1] http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/hostnamed/