From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.0.1) Gecko/20020809 Description of problem: Many ISPs have a silly habit of setting unresolvable hostnames for their DHCP clients. Yes, this is stupid, but its also quite common. Red Hat 7.3 wouldn't set the systems definitive hostname from DHCP, which meant that the hostname would be set to localhost unless changed, and GNOME 2 would happily start. 7.3.94 changes this behavior. Because of this, customers who run RHL on an ISP like Optus@Home will get an unresolvable hostname, and Gnome 2 won't start properly, popping up a nasty error message. It would be better to revert back to 7.3 behaviour of not setting the local hostname by default, and allow people to turn this option on is they need it. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1.Install RHL on Optus@Home cable or any ISP which issues unresolvable hostnames for clients 2.Attempt to log into Gnome Additional info:
Some DSL hardware router/firewalls such as NetGear RT314 also do this, and for a "good" reason: they don't provide DNS, only DHCP server. Even if you [try to] tell it your prefered hostname in your DHCP request, the router/firewall just gives you an IP4 with a name such as "dhcppc5". And even if the router/firewall were to honor your prefered hostname, it might be restricted in length so that a FQDN would be too long in most cases. So, it is better to let the HOSTNAME in /etc/sysconfig/network be the default, and override it only with explicit user OK.
If you are getting a bad hostname, the DHCP server is in error... It seems that there needs to be an option of not setting the hostname (which I need to add), but the default of following the instructions from the DHCP server is correct.
*** Bug 72622 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
HOSTNAME= takes precedence in 3.0pl1-8