[H-GEN] aliases

[Craig Eldershaw]

>Given that my username on UQ is zzjboggo and the name of my Linux box is
>dragon, can I set up or configure my linux box to respond to requests for
>dragon.dialin.uq.net.au without renaming the machine ? 

No.

>Or do I have to get my login name changed at UQ ?

Yes.  Well actually, not your login name, but your hostname (which happens to
be the same).  and I suspect you've Buckley's...

The problem is that the outside machine (lets call it dingo) doesn't try to
connect to dragon or zzjboggo, but rather it asks the DNS (Domain Name Server
- another computer owned by Prentice) what the IP address of dragon is.  The 
DNS replies "I've never heard of this dragon", and so the program on dingo 
says "error: host not found".  Whereas if you ask for zzjboggo, the DNS says
"Oh that's 203.101.236.75", at which point dingo goes and finds your machine
at that address and talks happily to it.

So for dingo to understand "dragon.dialin...", you need the DNS to give the
answer "dragon is 203.101.236.75".  To do that, you need to convince someone
in Prentice with authority to add a line in a table stored on the DNS
machine.  The adding of the line is easy, the convincing isn't.  In fact it 
probably won't happen without a lot of money or blackmail, or both.

An alternative is to join Humbug (if you're not already) and whinge at Bruce
Campbell (bofh at humbug.org.au) to give you an entry in the humbug domain.  Then
you'll be able to connect to dragon.humbug.org.au when you're on any machine
in the world.  This is acheived because humbug controls (via BC) another DNS 
computer, which is accessed by any computer enquiring about *.humbug.org.au
(each domain [the .humbug.org.au or .dialin.... bit] has a different DNS
machine).

Hope this helps...

Cheers,
	Craig.
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