[Hostname-devel] Bug#563074: hostname: FQ hostnames, -s option etc

[Miquel van Smoorenburg]

Package: hostname
Version: 3.01
Severity: normal

I know it's a recurring theme, but IMO hostname is broken when
you use a FQDN as the hostname. There are people who say you
should not do that - and yet there are OSes that do this by default.

In our case, we're converting FreeBSD boxes to Debian boxes
and existing software assumes a FQDN as hostname.

Now the current hostname can /set/ a FQDN as hostname:

# hostname test.xs4all.nl
(no errors)

.. but it is impossible to print it:

# hostname 
test

However, the long hostname was set:

# uname -n
test.xs4all.nl

The manpage says:

   GET NAME
       When  called  without  any  arguments, the program displays the current
       names:

       hostname will print the name of the system as returned by the  gethost‐
       name(2) function.

This is not true.

The manpage also says:

       -s, --short
              Display  the  short  host name. This is the host name cut at the
              first dot.

It now appears that -s is the default and there is no way to turn
it off.

Please fix hostname to follow the manpage.

Mike.