[X-Unix] URL remapped to .local address

[Kevin Stevens]

On Tue, 4 May 2004, Stephen Jonke wrote:

> What would cause a URL to map to a .local address when entered into the
> web browser? For example, the URL http://mydomain.com:1234/~jukebox
> (without an ending slash) turns into
> http://mylocalmachine.local/~jukebox/ which fails because I'm trying
> this while not on my local network. The machine "mylocalmachine" is
> behind an airport base station which has port mapping of port 1234 to
> port 80 on mylocalmachine. What's weird is that if I add an ending
> slash to the URL, then it works:  http://mydomain.com:1234/~jukebox/
> If I leave out the ending slash, it maps to the .local address.

It's a discrepancy between what Apache thinks the hostname is, and what OS
X thinks the hostname is.  More below.

> Am I running into a bug with the airport base stations port mapping, or
> did I set something up some time in the past that is doing this?

It's not the port mapping, it's a hostname issue.  I was able to override
it by forcing the host name in the httpd.conf file, but that's an ugly
workaround.

I'll state here that I am totally unable to control the hostname setting
on my 10.3 G5.

- I don't want a .local address, and cannot figure out where to eliminate
it.

- My hostname changes dynamically, apparently in response to some cron job
I haven't identified.

- hostname -s doesn't stay set.
- resolve.conf settings don't stay set.
- Changing the /etc/hostconfig HOSTNAME setting from -AUTO- doesn't stay
set.

It's frustrating as hell.  I want to use a standard host name on a
standard default domain.  When I drop to a shell and ask for the hostname,
God only knows what I'll get from day to day.  Sometimes it's 'babelfish',
which is what I have set.  Sometimes it's 'babelfish.local'.  Sometimes
it's 'babelfish.pursued-with.net'.  Sometimes it's "www babelfish mail
mailhost".

I *do* know how to control hostname and domain on a standard Linux/BSD
box.  Trying to do it on OSX is driving me up a tree.

KeS