Re: Machine naming convention

["Todd Williams" <todd@macsch.com>]

On Aug 6,  9:58, Gittler, Xev wrote:
> 
> On Wednesday, August 05, 1998 4:48 PM, Jeffrey Roberts
> > We are in the process of integrating several types of OS's, UNIX
> > and NT, in our company and we would like to standardize on a machine
> > naming convention.  Up until now we have used elements of the periodic
> > table, car names, personal names, etc... for machine names.

Xev had some excellent comments on this issue.

Did you realize that there is an RFC about this?  
RFC 1178, "Choosing a Name for Your Computer", Don Libes, Aug 1990.

As for the periodic table et al., I keep several non-computer books on
my shelf: an almanac, an astronomy text, a chemistry reference, etc.
These are handy for looking up names of islands, cities, stars, gems,
elements, cartoon characters, body parts, etc.

Cities can be a bad choice.  We have a machine name atlanta.  It is NOT
in our Atlanta office.  Some people may be confused by this.

Remember that you will always end up needing one more name than the
category contains.  Avoid the 7 dwarfs' names -- you will end up with
9 machines in that group, despite what you think now.

We chose obscure body part names (uvula, pons, fornix, duodenum) for our
Human Resources department.  Body parts are "human" "resources", right?

Choose your battles.  Personally, I choose not to fight the religious
hostname one.  You will never get it perfect.  Is "mustang" in the group
of hosts named after cars, or horses?  Is "hawaii" a state or an island?
Once the exceptions pile up, you realize it's a futile exercise.  Establish
a very loose policy (between 4 and 16 chars, no users names, etc.); make
some suggestions (common themes for groups of machines, pronounceable, not
easily misspelled, etc.); don't insist on compliance.

At this point, if a user really insists, I'll give him almost any name he
wants, as long as it isn't already taken.

Of course, I suppose you could just run DHCP everywhere (without reservations),
and then this issue would pretty much go away, since everyone would get a
new IP addr/hostname everytime they booted.

> Anyone want to get into a discussion of user names ;-)

Same as the above.  My terse policy:
Must be 2-8 chars, all lower case, alphanumeric, starting with an alphabetic.
(No dots, underscores, etc.)
Common choices are first name, last name, initials, first initial - last, etc.
ONE username for ALL systems - UNIX, NT, VMS, SecurID, oracle, etc.
You can have any name you want, as long as it isn't taken.
(If you really want to be known as "fluffy", go for it, big guy.

Anyone want to get into a discussion of hostname/username issues the come up
when companies MERGE ?  :-(

Todd Williams                     Manager, Computer and Communication Systems
MacNeal-Schwendler Corp. ("MSC"),  815 Colorado Blvd.,  Los Angeles, CA   90041
todd.williams@macsch.com          (323)259-4973          http://www.macsch.com/
geek  n. : a carnival performer often billed as a wild man whose act usu.
includes biting the head off a live chicken or snake  -Webster's New Collegiate