changing hostname....cde tooltalk + telnet failure

[John R Peck]

I didn't pick up on DNS being involved with it before, but if you have a DNS problem where
the hostname being presented to AIX does not look up as it should, the symptoms are
that you will get a a long hanging delay of some minutes from the telnet connection the
screen clearing before any login prompt appears.  By putting entries in your /etc/hosts and
setting /etc/netsvc.conf to use that ahead of DNS, you can work around that.

Note the order in /etc/hosts is important - if you have lines with duplicated IPs
or the same hostnames against several IPs, the first such line in the file is the
one that is used.  So where you've changed the hostname for the same IP,
make sure you have the new hostname first if you don't delete the old one.

Check also whether you've been using tcp_wrappers in /etc/inetd.conf for the telnet
line - check your /etc/hosts.allow settings if so - symptoms there are no connection
with immediate error.

[Michael]

The CDE subsystem starts, and remembers the hostname. If there is nothing critical, a reboot is usually the easiest solution. However, before you do so you should get on a command prompt and make sure that host and nslookup return identical values for the hostname.

What is very important for AIX the start is the existence of at least two entries in /etc/hosts. localhost itself, plus the hostname and address.

regarding your hostname WebSM - capital letters are not just a pretty formatting on UNIX. And clients that do not support case (e.g. Windows) are undefined (but basically using lowercase) when connecting via cmd.exe and telnet.exe. From a linux desktop (that usually has not installed telnet - which is why I am thinking windows) your problem is probably because the windows client was communicating the name websm - AIX does a check of the IP address connecting to it, as well as the name sent to it to connect (I am assuming ping did work - meaning the DNS did find WebSM and return an IP address.)

Corrections: for CDE - stop and start the daemons. Easiest way is to reboot (it is so long ago I have forgotten which command I need to find to kill).
For the hostname: use lowercase, or at least provide an alias in lowercase. Further, add the line: hosts=local4,bind4 (or local,bind for dual IPv4 and IPv6 - you can even get fancy and say local6,bind4,local4,bind6 - or any combination - also nis) in the file /etc/netsvc.conf.

[John R Peck]

CDE is one of those few things that doesn't like having the hostname changed under it.
If you've run it up with one hostname, it will save that in files and then may fail as you've found.
Assuming you don't mind trashing any CDE configuration you had done (custom icon arrangements
in the menus say), the best thing is to delete all user's CDE customisation files and try
again when the hostname is set as it should be.  For example for root (carefully with the typing!):

rm –rf /.TTauthority /.Xauthority /.dtprofile /.dt

smit hostname  # should be used to change the hostname.

Then check also /etc/hosts is correct.

[TheMunch]

Hello.
I'm pretty new to AIX (have some Linux experience though) and am now trying to set up the network on my 9114-275.

The cable's connected to ent1 (a 10/100/1000 interface) and the IP configuration went quite smoothly (fixed IP, router as DNS-Server that contacts our ISP's DNS-server.
Gateway = Router (192.168.1.1)

For testing purposes I left localhost as hostname - everything fine.

Though when I change the hostname via WebSM, Cde refuses to start (messaging server could not be started) and telnetting the computer doesn't work either.
How can I set the hostname the right way?