Change Host Name?

Questions and Answers : Unix/Linux : Change Host Name?
Message board moderation

To post messages, you must log in.

AuthorMessage
Profile Larry "Harris" Taylor

Send message
Joined: 19 May 99
Posts: 5
Credit: 14,408,074
RAC: 5
United States
Message 195103 - Posted: 26 Nov 2005, 5:27:38 UTC

I am making the transition from CLassic Seti to BOINC

Since 4 different Red HAt Fedora machines would NOT open the furnished 5,2,8 Linux install script (in either my hands or those of a Red Hat Linux certified engineer), I had a collegue at work open the installer on his Suse machine using the same directory structure I would use.

I copied the resultant expanded directory to my machines and ran the run_manager.

Appatently everything is working, but

now, I find that my machine has been named the same as the machine that opened the orooginal shell script ...not my machine ...

I want to install setiathome on another Linux machine, but aaprrently it too will have a bogus name ...
the same as the original machine.

I have tried tried editing the name in the client_state files and this does not work.

How do I assign the proper name to my machines?

(oh, and, of course, it would have been "nice" if the installer would have run on Fedora (g)...then this irritation would not have occurred (g))

Thanks for any assistance!

lpt@umich.edu
seti@home participant since May, 1999.

ID: 195103 · Report as offensive
Scarecrow

Send message
Joined: 15 Jul 00
Posts: 4520
Credit: 486,601
RAC: 0
United States
Message 195129 - Posted: 26 Nov 2005, 6:09:17 UTC
Last modified: 26 Nov 2005, 6:10:11 UTC

Before delving into hand-modifying the xml files, which has the potential to lead to other problems, here's a possible solution to the original install issue. You didn't say exactly what sort of errors you encountered, but in other instances errors relating to tar or gz when running the installer were caused by the download using ascii mode instead of binary mode. Depending on the ftp client or browser, the .sh extension and/or the leading lines of the file being text, it may default to ascii. The lion's share of the file is binary however, and the file should be downloaded as binary. You may have to chmod +x it as well before running it. It would definitly be preferable to get a clean install locally, so if you haven't tried the above, give that a go first.
ID: 195129 · Report as offensive
Profile Larry "Harris" Taylor

Send message
Joined: 19 May 99
Posts: 5
Credit: 14,408,074
RAC: 5
United States
Message 195140 - Posted: 26 Nov 2005, 6:44:38 UTC - in response to Message 195129.  

Before delving into hand-modifying the xml files, which has the potential to lead to other problems, here's a possible solution to the original install issue. You didn't say exactly what sort of errors you encountered, but in other instances errors relating to tar or gz when running the installer were caused by the download using ascii mode instead of binary mode. Depending on the ftp client or browser, the .sh extension and/or the leading lines of the file being text, it may default to ascii. The lion's share of the file is binary however, and the file should be downloaded as binary. You may have to chmod +x it as well before running it. It would definitly be preferable to get a clean install locally, so if you haven't tried the above, give that a go first.


ID: 195140 · Report as offensive
Profile Larry "Harris" Taylor

Send message
Joined: 19 May 99
Posts: 5
Credit: 14,408,074
RAC: 5
United States
Message 195151 - Posted: 26 Nov 2005, 7:25:35 UTC - in response to Message 195140.  

Before delving into hand-modifying the xml files, which has the potential to lead to other problems, here's a possible solution to the original install issue. You didn't say exactly what sort of errors you encountered, but in other instances errors relating to tar or gz when running the installer were caused by the download using ascii mode instead of binary mode. Depending on the ftp client or browser, the .sh extension and/or the leading lines of the file being text, it may default to ascii. The lion's share of the file is binary however, and the file should be downloaded as binary. You may have to chmod +x it as well before running it. It would definitly be preferable to get a clean install locally, so if you haven't tried the above, give that a go first.



Thanks for the response.

The shell script was downloaded from the seti (BOINC) page with Internet Explorer on a Windows box and transferred to a Linux box via secure WS_FTP Pro on auto detect mode ... I do this all the time between my laptop and a variety of Linux/Unix/Irix machines ... never run into a problem (once I learned that secure ftp wiped out executable permissions (g)).

The permissions were set via right click (properties) on the Linux box to allow read / write/ execute for owner and group. As such, I do NOT believe this is a permissions issue. Running the install script resultsd in an undefined directory tree error Others, far more Linux savvy than I, here downloaded directly from the web to their Fedora Linux box and could not get the shell script to run.

I tried running (with fresh copies of the BOINC install script) the install script as both user and root ... in my home directory and in root's home directory ... all attempts to run resulted in the directory tree error. Since this error was beyond my Linux capabilities, I asked a Red Hat licensed engineer to try opening the file ... he could not open the filein Fedora (core 3 or 4), bur it opened on a SUSE box with no problems.

Since I apparently had a directory that would work, I tried running the BOINC manager and found the seti setup was looking for his (on the SUSE box) home directory .... so, we reopened a fresh copy of the shell script on his machine using a the exact home/usr directory (installed to home/lpt/BIONC) that replicated my machine. He then moved the opened BOINC folders to my desktop, I moved them to my home directory and reset permissions. I then ran the manager on my machine, attached seti and started execution.

While browsing thru the various options of the BOINC manager, I noticed that my Linux box was reported by Seti as the name of the original machine that opened the install file. This is an error I would like to correct .. both for aesethics and the fact that I have other Fedora machines I would like to use for the seti project (that thave been used for years with command line classic seti)


So, once again, how do I assign the proper name to my machine?

Thanks

lpt@umich.edu
lpt

ID: 195151 · Report as offensive
Scarecrow

Send message
Joined: 15 Jul 00
Posts: 4520
Credit: 486,601
RAC: 0
United States
Message 195167 - Posted: 26 Nov 2005, 8:35:08 UTC - in response to Message 195151.  

So, once again, how do I assign the proper name to my machine?

Short of finding and correcting why there are errors during the install, I don't have an answer. The "directory tree" error sounds to me like it's coming from Fedora. There is nothing fancy with the boinc Linux installer, it's simply shell script that creates the BOINC directory, then untars the subdirectories and files that are included into that BOINC directory. If there are file system problems, or pre-existing directories or files with permissions that are blocking it, errors are likely to occur.

Any guess work on hacking files to make it work after the fact would probably amount to sabotage at some point down the road when some other problem occurs due to the hacks.

Perhaps some of the other Linux gurus can jump in with other suggestions if they so desire. In any event, if you could provide the exact messages you're seeing when you try installing, it may not only assist in solving this problem, but also help others that run into something similar. Sorry for not being more helpful.


ID: 195167 · Report as offensive
parkut
Volunteer tester

Send message
Joined: 9 Aug 99
Posts: 69
Credit: 9,779,243
RAC: 0
United States
Message 196073 - Posted: 26 Nov 2005, 23:49:07 UTC
Last modified: 26 Nov 2005, 23:50:16 UTC

Not at all sure about your problems, but I have several Fedora Core machines, all running Boinc.

My method of setting up a new client is to copy two files - the BOINC executable and account_setiweb.ssl.berkeley.edu.xml - into the target machines working directory. chmod 775 boinc, and ./boinc to get started

You can take the account.xml file from a known, working configuration.
192.168.2.90            slug.parkut.com         slug
127.0.0.1               localhost.localdomain   localhost

Putting the "real" host name above localhost in /etc/hosts like the example above solved the problem of getting the correct hostname to show up in the "view machines" roster on this site. Otherwise, they show up as "localhost"



ID: 196073 · Report as offensive
Profile Larry "Harris" Taylor

Send message
Joined: 19 May 99
Posts: 5
Credit: 14,408,074
RAC: 5
United States
Message 199159 - Posted: 30 Nov 2005, 4:16:31 UTC - in response to Message 196073.  

>>>My method of setting up a new client is to copy two files - the BOINCexecutable and account_setiweb.ssl.berkeley.edu.xml - into the target machines working directory. chmod 775 boinc, and ./boinc to get started

You can take the account.xml file from a known, working configuration.>>>

duemling,

Worked like a charm ...locally and remotely ... bless you (G)


Finally, the concern about the name was publically posting a collegue's work machine (who opened the original boinc install script) as my home computer name ... changed my seti profile to not report names and that potential political problem is gone.

The problem apparently (based on my limited Linux skill) resided in the Fedora handling of the compression format used in the install script, not in BOINC itself.

Thanks again!

lpt
ID: 199159 · Report as offensive

Questions and Answers : Unix/Linux : Change Host Name?


 
©2025 University of California
 
SETI@home and Astropulse are funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, NASA, and donations from SETI@home volunteers. AstroPulse is funded in part by the NSF through grant AST-0307956.