On Fri, 2004-09-24 at 22:21, Vince Littler wrote:

On Friday 24 September 2004 8:41 pm, Jerome R. Westrick wrote:

...

Hello all...

I have a domain, www.xyz.com, hosted on the internet. I have a server accesable as office.xyz.com.

The server is the server for a whole office, and has 2 network cards.

The external address coresponds to office.xyz.com. The internal is part of a 10.x.y.0/24 net...

My provider at www.xyz.com hosts my email accoutns. (He provides virus scanning, and Spam controll)

I also run a local email on office.xyz.com, since I don't want local email sent over the internet...

Now to my question.

What should the domain name of the office.xyz.com be? What should the doamin name of the machine in the office be?

What is the "correct" way to set this up, (instead of the way I got it working now)?

Jerry.

Presumably, email to you at xyz.com goes to you@xyz.com. Hence the domain you own is xyz.com, whereas I could surf to www.xyz.com, which is a host.

Provided that aspect is working to your satisfaction, the external naming is working fine and the terminology of domain and host [ie machine] is sorted.

Now, do you want the host office.xyz.com to be accessible from outside? Does it provide any service for which I or your ISP or any outsider might need to access it by name? If so, it should be <hostname>.xyz.com, where office is valid as <hostname>.

Yes, there is several services which I want to be accesable from the outside, the most promiment being ssh, but other also... I had planned on using office.xyz.com, but am confused, as to the internal naming convention. My sense of appropiateness says the machines inside the office should be called ws1.office.xyz.com This makes office.xyz.com a host name outside and a domain-name inside. I can find no way to handle this conflict... Maybe I should make the server accessable as server.office.xyz.com, to avoid this? And make server the default if no other specified? How is this stuff supposed to be set up? Obviously I'm confused as to what is appropiate (and correct)....

If you don't want it visible outside by name, don't give it an xyz.com hostname. Just call it office or something, either in the hosts files, or your internal DNS. Or invent an internal domain, which is not a recognised toplevel [.us, .uk .com .edu etc], and do your own DNS

Ah, this one I've done, making the internal host name server.xyz.local. It's the best I've come up with so far. But before I configure (another office server) that way I thought I'd ask my betters.... Jerry BTW. Thx for your time and efforts...

On Fri, 2004-09-24 at 23:37, Vince Littler wrote:

On Friday 24 September 2004 10:18 pm, Jerome R. Westrick wrote:

...

On Fri, 2004-09-24 at 22:21, Vince Littler wrote:

...

Now, do you want the host office.xyz.com to be accessible from outside? Does it provide any service for which I or your ISP or any outsider might need to access it by name? If so, it should be <hostname>.xyz.com, where office is valid as <hostname>.

Yes, there is several services which I want to be accesable from the outside, the most promiment being ssh, but other also...

I had planned on using office.xyz.com, but am confused, as to the internal naming convention.

My sense of appropiateness says the machines inside the office should be called ws1.office.xyz.com

This makes office.xyz.com a host name outside and a domain-name inside.

I can find no way to handle this conflict...

And even if you could handle the conflict, could you handle the confusion???

...

Maybe I should make the server accessable as server.office.xyz.com, to avoid this?

That seems more the way to go...

...

And make server the default if no other specified?

How is this stuff supposed to be set up? Obviously I'm confused as to what is appropiate (and correct)....

...

If you don't want it visible outside by name, don't give it an xyz.com hostname. Just call it office or something, either in the hosts files, or your internal DNS. Or invent an internal domain, which is not a recognised toplevel [.us, .uk .com .edu etc], and do your own DNS

Ah, this one I've done, making the internal host name server.xyz.local.

...but if you make the internal domain xyz.local or just local, the server hostname can be server.xyz.local internally and office.xyz.com externally. You then have to configure an internal DNS and arrange for external DNS. Never done this myself.

Note that internally, you will also be able to access the server by both hostnames. Your workstations should be <hostname>.local or ~.xyz.local, assuming no one outside will need to request services on these. If they need external services [http etc], but do not provide them, an externally recognised IP address [or NAT] is good enough, the rest of the internet does not need to know them by hostanme.

...

It's the best I've come up with so far. But before I configure (another office server) that way I thought I'd ask my betters....

... but you got an answer from me instead.

Thx Vince... I'll Try the server.office.xyz.com, and server.xyz.local and see how it appeals to my sense of rightness. I Always setup an internal DNS, so It can be updated by DHCP. With out theese 2 I have to either: 1) Do the Hosts thingy, and configure each workstation by hand....argh! 2) or keep guessing the ip addresses of the workstations. The way I've done it until now is to define each hosts ip address via the MAC address in the DHCP configs. Pain when you add a new machine, but it once setup it works like a charm... Jerry Thx again, for your input...