Re: networkmanager hostname woes

[Thomas Danckaert <post@thomasdanckaert.be>]

From: Alex Sassmannshausen <alex.sassmannshausen@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: networkmanager hostname woes
Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2017 17:47:43 +0200

>> AFAIU, the cause is that networkmanager changes my hostname (after
>> DHCP?), in my case to “new-host2” or something similar, and this
>> seems to break the X session.  When I manually restore the hostname
>> with “sudo hostname <original-hostname>”, the problem is solved.  
>> Is
>> there anyway to disable this behaviour for networkmanager?
> [...]
> This makes me think that it might be a network configuration
> derived issue — but I have not been able to get to the bottom of 
> this
> yet…
>
> I see that you might be based in Belgium — I am too, and my home 
> network
> uses most of the defaults from Proximus' B-Box 2.  If this is the 
> case
> for you too, then perhaps it is a matter of the default settings in 
> that
> router?

Yes, I'm using the same router, and I can agree it's not 
“professional”-grade :-).  Still, I don't think a bad router 
configuration should be able to change my hostname.

Following Christopher Baines' suggestion, I created /etc/hostname by 
adding the following to my system configuration:

(define etc-hostname-service-type
   (service-type (name 'etc-hostname)
                 (extensions
                  (list (service-extension etc-service-type
                                           (lambda (hostname)
                                             (list `("hostname" 
,(plain-file "hostname" hostname)))))))))

and in the (operating-system (services ...)) list:

     (service etc-hostname-service-type host-name)

I don't know if this kind of extension should be added to an existing 
service (networkmanager itself, perhaps?).  Though I have the feeling 
a more proper solution should exist.

 From what I've read, it might also be a DHCP issue: some DHCP 
 clients are configured to take on the hostname offered by the 
 router, perhaps that could/should be changed?  I see that wicd has 
 its own settings for these things (/etc/wicd/wireless-settings.conf 
 contains things like usedhcphostname = 0).  I'm hoping someone with 
 more experience can give some advice here :)

Thomas