Choosing a domain name

[spatialguru]

During installation you must provide a domain name. Some documentation suggests home.com, but I often use home.local just so that OpenDNS doesn't try to connect me to the real home.com when I have troubles.

Anyway, my question is based on the recent question on the list... how do I change my domain name after installation?

The final answer was basically having to reinstall Amahi - but even then perhaps we can get a thread here that describes the process. I know how to manually change a name, but I'm ignorant of how deep this goes into Amahi.

[cpg]

It goes pretty deep, as it affects

• samba (names for the workgroup in lmhosts)
• each web app foo has a ServerAlias of foo.home.com in the conf
• networking/dns also needs reconfiguration
• then services need to be restarted, and last but not least,
• it will not take effect until the clients refresh their leases

We have mechanisms to re-generate those configurations (hda-install file, restarting services, etc.), however, they are not all "hooked together" in a single point that can seamlessly trigger a reconfiguration when the name is changed.

Then some non-amahi-specific services may "acquire" the local name and may need to be restarted (perhaps cupsd, or mysql, or mt-daapd, nfsd, etc.). We don't know how many of these there may be.

It's non trivial, since this was not a design goal, basically.

[erauch]

This was a good question and I think you Amahi Guys need to put more emphasis on the selection of this domain name in your install directions since it is such a non-trivial thing to change after install. I personally installed with home.com not realizing it couldn't be changed easily. I then changed to Rauch.com, which is what is seen by my Windows machines, but if you look at their IP's it still references home.com. After all the hoops I had to jump through just to get this installed, (dealing with Fedora 9 PGP bugs and updates.) I think I am going to punt - remove Amahi and go back to FreeNas. Not to mention FreeNas doesn't use 3 gigs of my storage space like Amahi. But the product has come along way! Cheers!

EdR

[cpg]

thanks for your feedback, ed. this is important to point out.
will put more emphasis on that in the install process.