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Kanishka Panamaldeniya
Asked: 2014-09-06 03:26:04 +0800 CST

hostname shows as vps Ubuntu

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Hi i am using a ubuntu server , some other person has made it . i checked my host name by typing hostname it says vps .

I checked in my etc/hostname file it says the name is vps

in /ect/hosts file it has 

127.0.0.1       localhost
127.0.1.1       vps.xxxxxx.no vps
xxx.xx.xxx.xx   xxxxxx.com

and xxx.xx.xxx.xx is my site's ip address

also this site is accessed by a url different than xxxxxx.com . lets say my sitec is accessed via zzzzzzz.com

my problems are

in /ect/hosts it says site host is xxxxxx.com but you can access it by a different name zzzzzzz.com . so where can you set that setting ?

also my hostname is showing as vps and what is the logic behind that

I Know these are dumb questions but I can not find any thing .

12.04

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Be ware that the names and their corresponding IP addresses defined inside your server (by /etc/hosts and /etc/hostname) are only known by your server.
    You can define anything you like there.

    Outside your server, there are the DNS servers that will offer a name to IP address resolution to the Internet users. The name defined into the DNS may be different from the one defined into the server.

    Also, on the machine from which you are accessing your server, there may be some /etc/hosts file with another name used to map to the IP address of your server.

    So, your server with IP a.b.c.d can be called vps internally (/etc/hostname & /etc/hosts).
    On the Internet, there may be offical DNS name XXXXXX.com pointing to a.b.c.d.
    On local desktop, you can even have a local /etc/hosts file where you have the name ZZZZZZ.com defined for a.b.c.d.

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  2. In /ect/hosts it says site host is xxxxxx.com but you can access it by a different name zzzzzzz.com . So where can you set that setting ?

    I would start checking

    • the router.
    • for a DNS server. Since it is called vps it might be a virtual system.

    Also my hostname is showing as vps and what is the logic behind that

    It is just a name in hosts as far as we can tell. You should ask the creator of the server but generally speaking: VPS means virtual private server. If that is what it is you might consider the name appropriate.

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