Re: X session and hostname changing policy

[Robby Workman <rw rlworkman net>]

On Tue, 22 Jun 2010 02:21:27 -0700
Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com> wrote:

> 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.


Well, having the installer do it isn't an option here since Slackware
doesn't ship NetworkManager, but I did the next best thing that came
to mind here:

http://slackbuilds.org/gitweb/?p=slackbuilds.git;a=commit;h=3a608519b69

-RW