Re: X session and hostname changing policy

[Ludwig Nussel <ludwig nussel suse de>]

Dan Williams wrote:
> On Tue, 2010-06-22 at 09:14 +0200, Ludwig Nussel wrote:
> > Dan Williams wrote:
> > > On Mon, 2010-06-14 at 23:16 +0300, Fırat Birlik wrote:
> > > > I experience a problem with hostname manipulation of NetworkManager
> > > > and the X session.  DHCP server sends a hostname within the dhcp
> > > > offer, which is different the current one.  There is no persistent
> > > > hostname definition within the 'nm-system-settings.conf' as this is a
> > > > default installation.  NetworkManager just changes the hostname and as
> > > > new hostname is not authenticated (xhost cookie MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 for
> > > > new hostname does not exist) no new application can be started
> > > > afterwards.
> > > 
> > > The solution is *not* to use hostname for local X authentication at all.
> > 
> > Even if that problem didn't exist... What's the benefit of allowing
> > a DHCP server in a foreign network to modify the hostname by default
> > anyways?
> 
> One example: single-image boots on multiple systems (computer lab,
> datacenter, whatever).  You don't want each one to have the same
> hostname, so you let DHCP assign a hostname to the machine when it boots
> up.

I have no doubt that there are use cases for setting the host name
via DHCP. I wonder whether those cases are wide spread enough to
justify tuning NetworkManager's *default* behavior for them though.
Given that NetworkManager is most useful for WiFi and situations
where users need to switch networks often a default of not changing
the hostname seems sensible to me.

cu
Ludwig

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