Re: X session and hostname changing policy

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Tue, 2010-06-22 at 10:06 +0200, Ludwig Nussel wrote:
> 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.

For most people, I'd expect a persistent hostname set though.
Installers will often do this for you (at least RH and Ubuntu's
installers do) and thus I'd expect most people won't get their hostname
changing dynamically.

Dan