[HN Gopher] Choosing a Name for Your Computer (1990)
___________________________________________________________________
Choosing a Name for Your Computer (1990)
Author : elorm
Score : 143 points
Date : 2023-05-22 07:25 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.rfc-editor.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.rfc-editor.org)
| DonHopkins wrote:
| I stuffed the RFC into GPT and asked for a summary, and asked it
| to write 10 examples of each point. It "hallucinated" an
| interesting elaboration of the "use real words" rule that wasn't
| mentioned in the RFC:
|
| >Use real words:
|
| >- Unreal words: Zibber, Quibbit, Wuzzo, Brumple, Kwozzle,
| Gliggern, Drimble, Fopple, Zinkern, Thribble
|
| >- Real words: Pulsar, Fusion, Vector, Quantum, Catalyst, Dynamo,
| Nexus, Zephyr, Vortex, Phoenix
|
| So I asked it, "Give me a list of 100 silly unreal words that are
| good computer names."
|
| And it generated a hilarious list of silly unreal words for
| computer names that obeyed all the other rules too.
|
| >Blibber Flibbit Zoggly Snarfle Quizzix Jibberix Flumble Snootle
| Jumblex Skrungle Flibberish Squozzle Buzzlequib Zumblequack
| Skrizzik Glibbergen Squibble Wibbleshack Zibberflap Quabblefudge
| Kwozzler Skrubble Jibberlump Squibbleton Quacklebum Wuzzlequorp
| Flibberquill Zibberplush Quozzletuck Grubblefrush Jumblezor
| Squigglemuff Quabbleblurt Buzzlekringle Skrubblefrimp Blibbertron
| Glibberspark Wuzzlethrump Flibblecrust Zibberklax Quozzlegruff
| Flumblezest Jibberclump Squibblethorp Skrungleblast Zumblequax
| Grubbleflink Flibbersprout Buzzlegrit Quacklepuff Blibberchomp
| Snootleburst Glibberzilch Squozzleflop Kwozzlespork Skrubblemunch
| Zumblethrift Quozzlequench Flibblegrit Jibberplank Squibblezorb
| Quacklethrift Flumblezax Wuzzlesplat Glibberfluff Blibbersketch
| Zibberfrizzle Squozzleblimp Grubblequark Buzzlekrunch
| Skrunglefluff Zumblecrunch Quozzlefrump Flibbersquatch Jibberflit
| Squibblekrush Blibberblitz Wuzzleflank Skrubblespook Zumblekrunk
| Quackleflunk Grubblesmirk Squozzlefrimp Buzzleplunk Flibblezorp
| Glibberplush Jibberclank Squibblesmudge Blibbergrit Zibberzorch
| Wuzzlequench Kwozzlesplurge Skrunglethrift Flumbleblimp
| Quozzlesmirk Buzzlefluff Grubblethwack Zumblegrit Quackleblurt
| Squibbleplush
|
| They seemed to have certain patterns to them, so I asked:
| "Describe in words the linguistic and other techniques you used
| to come up with that list of silly words."
|
| >Sure, the process of generating a list of silly, unreal words
| involves several linguistic and creative techniques:
|
| >Phonotactics: Phonotactics is the study of the rules governing
| the possible phoneme sequences in a language. In creating these
| words, I adhered to the phonotactic rules of English, ensuring
| that the combinations of sounds were plausible for English
| speakers.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonotactics
|
| >Phonaesthetics: This is the study of the inherent pleasantness
| (euphony) or unpleasantness (cacophony) of the sound of certain
| words, phrases, and sentences. To come up with silly words, I
| chose combinations that are typically associated with a humorous
| or whimsical sound in English.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonaesthetics
|
| >Combining Familiar Sounds: To create these unreal words, I
| combined familiar sounds and syllables from English in new and
| unusual ways. This increases the chances that the words will be
| pronounceable and memorable, while still being novel and silly.
|
| >Consonant-Vowel Structure: Most of the words follow a basic
| consonant-vowel structure, which is common in English and makes
| the words easier to pronounce.
|
| >Morpheme Mixing: Morphemes are the smallest meaningful units of
| language. In English, we can combine morphemes in different ways
| to create new words. In this case, I combined various nonsensical
| morphemes to create new, unreal words.
|
| >Influence of Existing Words: Some of the created words might
| resemble or remind you of existing words in English. This was
| intentional as these associations can make the words sound more
| familiar and easier to remember, while still being clearly
| unreal.
|
| >Humorous Connotations: Many of these words were designed to have
| humorous or whimsical connotations. This was achieved by choosing
| sounds and syllable combinations that are often associated with
| humor, silliness, or absurdity in English.
|
| >Variety: In creating this list, I sought to ensure a wide
| variety of sounds, syllable counts, and levels of complexity.
| This increases the overall silliness of the list and ensures that
| there are words that will appeal to different tastes.
|
| >Remember, though, that creating silly, unreal words is a highly
| creative process and there are no hard-and-fast rules. The most
| important thing is to have fun with it and create words that make
| you smile!
|
| I've never heard of Phonaesthetics or Phonaesthetics (but they
| sound plausible and pleasant ;) ), so I asked: "To elaborate
| about Phonaesthetics and Phonaesthetics, give me as many explicit
| examples of possible of how those techniques apply to the list of
| computer names you generated above."
|
| >Sure, here's how the principles of phonotactics and
| phonaesthetics apply to some of the silly, unreal words I created
| as potential computer names:
|
| >Phonotactics:
|
| >"Brungle": This word adheres to English phonotactic rules, in
| which a single consonant or consonant cluster ("br") can be
| followed by a vowel ("u"), and then ending in a consonant or
| consonant cluster ("ngle").
|
| >"Fribzoot": Again, "fribzoot" starts with a valid English
| consonant cluster ("fr"), followed by a short vowel ("i"),
| another consonant cluster ("bz"), a vowel ("oo"), and ends with a
| consonant ("t").
|
| >"Blupzark": This word adheres to the English phonotactic rules
| with a valid consonant cluster ("bl") followed by a short vowel
| ("u"), a consonant ("p"), another consonant cluster ("z"), a
| vowel ("a"), and ending with a consonant ("rk").
|
| >"Tringwop": Here, "tr" is a common consonant cluster, followed
| by a short vowel ("i"), a consonant cluster ("ng"), a vowel
| ("o"), and a final consonant ("p"). Each part of the word is a
| permissible combination in English.
|
| >Phonaesthetics:
|
| >"Snorkwib": This word has a whimsical sound to it, due to the
| combination of the "sn" sound at the beginning, often associated
| with words like "snicker" and "sneak", and the "wib" at the end,
| which is an uncommon but still pronounceable combination in
| English.
|
| >"Quibnorf": The use of "qu" at the beginning adds a quirky,
| whimsical sound, while the ending "-norf" adds to the absurdity,
| reminding one of words like "dwarf".
|
| >"Glibfraz": The "glib-" prefix may remind us of the word "glib",
| giving a sense of smooth, quick wit. The "-fraz" suffix has a
| zany, fun feel to it.
|
| >"Plonkstir": The beginning, "plonk", may bring to mind the
| English onomatopoeic word 'plonk', giving a playful, silly feel.
| The ending "-stir" balances it with a more usual word ending.
|
| >Phonotactic rules ensure that the created words are plausible
| and pronounceable to English speakers, even though they are
| entirely made up. Phonaesthetics, on the other hand, contributes
| to the silliness, whimsy, and overall appeal of the words, making
| them suitable and memorable as computer names.
|
| >Please note that while these linguistic principles can guide the
| process, the creation of such words also involves a considerable
| degree of creativity and intuition.
|
| These techniques are also useful for generating memorable nice
| sounding company and product names, too!
| [deleted]
| srvmshr wrote:
| I named all my computers and VMs after sword or sword namesakes e
| g. Katana, Excalibur, Scimitar etc.
|
| All my versioning names also follow some popular project's
| version names e.g. x86 & amd64 internal designations or
| codenames. Similarly, for smaller versioning tasks I have used
| Fedora Project's release names. I just do it to learn something
| along the way as well.
|
| It just gives the different entities I work on a personalized
| touch.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| If I need to name a personal computer, I will name it after a
| famous computer, like DeepThought.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| My favorites that my business partner and I used at Customer
| sites:
|
| - Jovian moons
|
| - Trees
|
| - Constellations
|
| - U.S. state capitol cities
|
| - Chemical elements
| kps wrote:
| I use chemical elements at home. They have nice short
| abbreviations that can be used mnemonically, e.g. mo
| (molybdenum) is my modem and pr (praseodymium) is my printer.
| And if I somehow lose DNS and /etc/hosts on every machine, I
| can still look up their IPv4 addresses in a book.
| mjmsmith wrote:
| I've been rotating a subset of these for years: jqa mvb whh
| jkp usg rbh jag caa wht wgh fdr hst dde jfk lbj
| alchemist1e9 wrote:
| That is another useful short and long scheme as long as one
| needs under 46 and I wonder if any are duplicated yet?
| ineedasername wrote:
| In college our data systems ran various vaxen boxes, and there
| were few enough that they used planet names. Distinct, easy to
| remember, unlikely to clash with any other terminology. And had
| their needs grown beyond the 8 non-Earth planets (Earth wasn't
| used, and Pluto was still a planet at the time) they could simply
| begin using the names of moons and other well know rocks flying
| about the solar system.
|
| In my own personal home setups I've followed the convention of
| choosing a from a religious pantheon the name of a god whose role
| most approximated-- very loosely-- whatever the system is going
| to be used for. I had a Hephaestus for a while that was a
| workhorse of a machine where I would work on special projects,
| etc.
| cdelsolar wrote:
| My home computers are "themonolith" because it's a too-big
| rectangular prism that kinda looks like a monolith, and pi1 /
| pi2. Kind of uncreative and now I want to name them after
| something cooler.
| jdblair wrote:
| Computers as pets!
| modderation wrote:
| I'd recommend a read of RFC 2100: The Naming of Hosts [1] for
| more on the matter, as naming choices may drive one as mad as a
| hatter!
|
| [1] https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2100
| SkipperCat wrote:
| When you only have a few computers to manage, have fun with
| names. But when you start to have hundreds (or thousands) of
| computers, you really need a naming convention. At that point,
| you're dealing with multiple environments, locations and business
| units. Being able to glean that information from a name is very
| helpful.
|
| Also, at that scale, names are never permanent. You're renaming
| (or rebuilding) hosts as they change location and usage.
|
| The worst is when you scale up from a small firm where all the
| hosts are named after movie characters and all services are hard
| coded to those names. Been there, its rough....
| gglitch wrote:
| Written by Expect's own Don Libes :)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expect
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Libes
| omoikane wrote:
| Related: https://xkcd.com/910/
| jhickok wrote:
| The most useful naming scheme that I have seen in a professional
| setting for end-user computing is [OS]-[SerialNumber]. Win-
| asdf1234 is immediately telling for sysadmin types that spend a
| lot of time in Active Directory or an ITSM. If you were in a
| multi-location stop, perhaps a location code as well.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| I like to give domain-joined computers the rights to modify
| some typically-unused AD attributes (givenName, surName, etc)
| on their own objects. I assign a Startup Script to populate
| make, model, serial, etc, into these unused attributes. These
| attributes are nice because their display specifiers allow them
| to be added to views in Active Directory Users and Computers
| very easily.
| JohnFen wrote:
| In places I've worked that have done this, it has frequently
| led to problems. Those names are harder to tell someone
| verbally, are easier to confuse, and easier to fat-finger
| without noticing.
| thom wrote:
| Ah, I remember the day we retired the last machine named after a
| forest in Magic: the Gathering and shredded its soul into a
| thousand pieces, each of which adhered to one AWS service or
| another. I still feel guilty. Especially when the bill arrives
| each month.
| ochrist wrote:
| I use the last name of science fiction authors for my machines,
| and the first character is a hint to the usage. E.g. NAS is
| Niven, Web server is Wells etc. (don't ask me for the name of the
| developer box).
| JohnFen wrote:
| > (don't ask me for the name of the developer box).
|
| Stephenson?
| ochrist wrote:
| It starts with Philip K.
| clnq wrote:
| Everyone here is talking about creative machine naming schemes,
| but almost every org in the world names machines with random
| strings, like what Windows OOBE generates by default. Sometimes
| the names are pre-OOBEd with scripts that generate images for new
| machines, but they are still mostly random. I have never seen a
| creative machine name in an academic or business setting. It's
| interesting how different HN is from most orgs.
|
| Honestly, even most home machines are randomly named, I think.
| dmurray wrote:
| My 2000-person employer (in finance!) names desktop machines
| with dictionary words and a short seemingly random suffix. So
| you could be GIRAFFE84F, there won't typically be other
| giraffes.
|
| Servers get names that are concatenations of meaningful
| abbreviations that are meaningless to an outsider, you might be
| on nycfithro603.
|
| Actually I can't think of any org I've worked for that had
| random strings for its physical machines. Cloud VMs, yes
| (though not always).
| clnq wrote:
| My experience is completely different. Having worked in
| companies between 15 and 15k employees, I've never seen
| anything other than random strings.
|
| A while ago I wrote a script that uses GPT to generate some
| machine names and then check them for collisions with
| existing ones. So no suffixes needed. I thought I was
| innovating, hahaha. Very interesting.
| smcameron wrote:
| I once named a server hosting an RCS repo "fire", so that when
| someone asked about the source code I could reply, "It's on
| fire."
| mianosm wrote:
| Coming from a systems background (administrator, engineer, and
| architect for many years): this is horrendous, but insightful as
| to how things were back when it was written.
|
| Coming up with a uniform, concise, and easily decipherable scheme
| is really the best for naming nodes on a network (be it at your
| home, or in a data center with 10s of thousands of machines
| (virtual and physical)).
|
| GUID is a bit extreme, but leveraging DDNS, and having a plan is
| always the best (and not naming things after a finite index like:
| planets, cartoon characters, mythological objects, or models).
| sumthinprofound wrote:
| we name devices based on the inventory asset tag we affix as a
| prefix + the acronym of the department the device is assigned to
| as the suffix. clean and consistent across thousands of devices.
| softgrow wrote:
| I named computers in a church after biblical characters for a
| while and moved back to asset tags. You can never be sure how
| to spell Nebuchadnezzar and asset tags are sooo much easier.
| Dig1t wrote:
| >Words like "moron" or "twit" are good names if no one else is
| going to see them. But if you ever give someone a demo on your
| machine, you may find that they are distracted by seeing a nasty
| word on your screen. (Maybe their spouse called them that this
| morning.) Why bother taking the chance that they will be turned
| off by something completely irrelevant to your demo.
|
| I see their point, but I'm going to consciously ignore this
| advice because it makes my life more interesting.
| danaris wrote:
| For many years, I named my (personal) computers after fictional
| AIs--starting with the Marathon series, so the first two in this
| set were Durandal and Leela.
|
| More recently, I have been naming them after the cats in Diane
| Duane's Feline Wizards series (which begins with The Book of
| Night with Moon); however, having run through Rhiow, Saash,
| Urruah, and Arhu, I'm going to have to find a new naming scheme
| for my next one!
| aquova wrote:
| I would also recommend picking a system with a sizable pool of
| options. Naming my computers after the planets seemed like a fine
| idea, until you start living with someone and start adding
| Raspberry Pis and other devices around the home. Eight planets
| didn't quite cut it, and now I have an odd mix of mythological
| characters.
| gleenn wrote:
| Maybe name the little Pis after moons? Seems fitting somehow
| and they keep finding more too!
| [deleted]
| aquova wrote:
| My system was to have the machines be the planets, and then
| their drives would be the moons. It made it easy to remember
| which drives would be available on a given machine. However,
| it was also a problem when I wanted to add a second drive to
| Mercury and didn't have any options...
| vikingerik wrote:
| You could use spacecraft that have visited Mercury, which
| would get you up to three at least.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| I used Jovian moons at one site because I knew it would be
| likely I'd get more names later. >smile<
| jmillikin wrote:
| If you're going to be naming a lot of computers, it's
| surprisingly important to pick a naming format that is (1)
| expandable and (2) trivially parseable. The naming scheme that
| seems simple when you're in a garage can be constraining when
| there's too many to track in a spreadsheet.
|
| My favored format is somewhat complex in terms of layout, but is
| compact and easy to read once you get used to it:
| IATA code (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IATA_airport_code)
| Cluster number (digits) 'r' (for "rack") \______ if
| meaningful for you Rack number / (ignore for
| EC2/GCP) 'm' (for "machine") Machine number
|
| An example hostname might be `dls1r56m10.mycompany-prod.com`.
|
| Alternatives that don't work as well:
|
| * Don't use a fixed-width field _anywhere_. Google used two-
| letter cluster names, and when those ran out they discovered that
| the two-letter assumption had worked its way into every layer of
| the stack. One of the important core services had `uint16_t
| cluster` in its wire protocol.
|
| * Don't make up your own cluster names. Don't use names like
| "northwest" or "east". IATA codes are your friend and you will
| love them because someone else already decided what they should
| be and wrote them down.
|
| * Don't use fields without delimiters. Being able to say "read
| digits until the next non-digit" is incredibly useful when
| writing ad-hoc parsers in shell scripts, because those parsers
| won't break when you bring up the first datacenter with more than
| 99 racks. If you tell people not to write hacky ad-hoc parsers in
| shell scripts, they will (1) do so anyway and (2) not tell you.
|
| * Don't leave off the cluster number. Yes, you only have one
| cluster in us-west-2 _right now_ , but maybe in five years you'll
| need to have more than one because you want to run 30,000 EC2
| instances there but all your per-cluster infrastructure software
| falls over at 20,000 instances. Then you can just turn up "pdx2"
| instead of trying to explain to Hashicorp engineers why you want
| to run the world's biggest Consul cluster.
|
| * Do not put the production hostnames under a subdomain of your
| corporate website. If you are ACME LLC then your hostnames should
| end with `.acme-prod.com` instead of `.prod.acme.com`. The same
| is true of corporate IT assets like laptops or workstations
| (`acme-corp.com` -- NEVER `.corp.acme.com`). Why? Browser
| cookies.
| infogulch wrote:
| > Do not put the production hostnames under a subdomain of your
| corporate website. ... Why? Browser cookies.
|
| Is there more to say about this? How do browser cookies
| conflict with server and PC hostnames?
| drewg123 wrote:
| +1 for airport codes. I was surprised to learn about this
| convention which seems to be used by many CDNs when I first
| started working for Netflix, but it makes a huge amount of
| sense.
|
| Now if I just had a dollar for each time I've fat-fingered
| sjc002 to scj002 ... :)
| lloydatkinson wrote:
| Interesting, I will bookmark this. Using airport codes for
| location is surprising to me.
| twic wrote:
| The IATA code thing seems a bit wobbly. Am i really going to
| sit and work out if our datacentre in Sutton is closer to
| Heathrow or City airports?
|
| We name our datacentres with a two-letter city code and a digit
| (or some letters and then some digits in your framework!). The
| city codes aren't from any canonical list, but it turns out
| there aren't enough to matter. So far, this has served equally
| well at avoiding arguments about what to call things.
|
| We name machines ${datacentre}-${other_stuff}. That makes it
| trivial to tell what exact datacentre a machine is in. That's
| very nice if you have to reason about networking. In your
| scheme, if you had multiple datacentres near one airport, you
| would have to know the mapping from cluster to datacentre,
| right?
| amalcon wrote:
| The usual (and suboptimal) solution to that one is to just
| use the biggest airport in the metro area -- e.g. servers in
| Chicago are tagged ORD even if they happen to be located next
| door to Midway.
|
| However, IATA does provide city codes even if no airport in
| that city actually uses them. London's is LON, Chicago's is
| CHI. It's better to just use those.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| Same. Biggest airport in the area unless the data center is
| somehow VERY close to a secondary airport or something.
|
| Can't speak to others but one of the main reasons is if our
| team has to fly chances are they're hitting the main
| airport, anyway. Like, we're not going to try to finagle a
| Spirit or RyanAir flight, just fly to ORD and taxi / uber.
| For someone looking to travel on the cheap and with no
| concerns about time those airlines and airports are fine,
| but work demands change that math.
| twic wrote:
| I love the idea that someone might book a flight purely
| based on a hostname. Maybe they even have a Perl script
| for it!
| pasc1878 wrote:
| Actually for Sutton it is probably BQH - Biggin Hill
| [deleted]
| michaelteter wrote:
| Including location detail in the name would only seem
| appropriate for massive operations which include slow and
| methodical procedures for changes. Otherwise you would end up
| moving servers and now having names which incorrectly suggest
| their mount positions.
| throw0101c wrote:
| > _IATA codes are your friend and you will love them because
| someone else already decided what they should be and wrote them
| down._
|
| UN/LOCODE may be more appropriate:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UN/LOCODE
|
| * https://unece.org/trade/cefact/unlocode-code-list-country-
| an...
|
| Has both country code and location with-in that.
| tambre wrote:
| > IATA code (3 characters)
|
| What do you do if there's no airport?
| jmbwell wrote:
| Or several?
| herio wrote:
| https://unece.org/trade/cefact/unlocode-code-list-country-
| an...
|
| UN/LOCODE tends to have an abbreviation for most places.
| mhandley wrote:
| I'm sure someone can find an objection. For example,
| Belfast (UK) is "GB BEL", but isn't actually in Great
| Britain (it is in "the United Kingdom of Great Britain and
| Northern Ireland").
| michaelhoffman wrote:
| Here, "GB" stands for "United Kingdom of Great Britain
| and Northern Ireland", not "Great Britain".
|
| > The codes are chosen, according to the ISO 3166/MA, "to
| reflect the significant, unique component of the country
| name in order to allow a visual association between
| country name and country code".[5] For this reason,
| common components of country names like "Republic",
| "Kingdom", "United", "Federal" or "Democratic" are
| normally not used for deriving the code elements. As a
| consequence, for example, the United Kingdom is
| officially assigned the alpha-2 code GB rather than UK,
| based on its official name "United Kingdom of Great
| Britain and Northern Ireland" (although UK is reserved on
| the request of the United Kingdom). Some codes are chosen
| based on the native names of the countries. For example,
| Germany is assigned the alpha-2 code DE, based on its
| native name "Deutschland".
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1
| jmillikin wrote:
| Pick the nearest airport? Or a nearby airport? Airport in the
| location's capital city? There's always an airport[0].
|
| The purpose is to have a Schelling point that bypasses any
| tedious weeks-long arguments. Otherwise your Frankfurt
| datacenter gets named "ceurope" because the London datacenter
| got "europe" first, or you named the Ohio datacenter "east"
| and there's a fight about whether to call the new Virginia
| datacenter "easter".
|
| [0] If you're building a submerged datacenter in the middle
| of the Atlantic then ... well, do your best.
| TRiG_Ireland wrote:
| Got it. No data centre in Andorra.
| jmbwell wrote:
| Yeah see, it doesn't necessarily solve any of these
| problems.
|
| If you have to do all this guesswork or refer to
| documentation anyway, maybe just use the human readable and
| immediately interpretable name of the town the DC is in.
| Increment a number for each new DC in the area. No
| cognitive hoops to jump through.
| dsr_ wrote:
| How many Springfields in the US? (65ish)
|
| How many San Joses in the world? (1700ish)
|
| Pennsylvania has two Baldwins, two Whitehalls and two
| Elizabeths.
| bee_rider wrote:
| "I know we're physically closer to BDL, but I think we're
| culturally closer to JFK and, come on, you know the name is
| cooler," says the guy determined to reintroduce bikesheding
| into the naming process.
| derefr wrote:
| There's only one good "closer to" for these purposes, and
| that's "by packet latency." The prefix is basically the
| location of the carrier hotel that serves your DC.
| bee_rider wrote:
| This seems to just shift the problem to mapping an
| airport to the carrier hotel, though?
| throw0101c wrote:
| > _What do you do if there 's no airport?_
|
| UN/LOCODE may be more appropriate:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UN/LOCODE
|
| * https://unece.org/trade/cefact/unlocode-code-list-country-
| an...
|
| Has both country code and location with-in that.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| For my private network, I used The Black Company for characters.
| Logging on CROAKER. Primary Domain Controller would be DOMIN8R;
| Backup Domain Controller is THELADY. Heavy wizardry on ONEEYE or
| GOBLIN. Various servers got CATCHER, SHIFTER, LIMPER, and the
| like.
| teddyh wrote:
| A rare gem. Now cue all the people, not having read it, chiming
| in with comments of the form " _What I use is..._ [something
| which the RFC recommends _against_ doing]".
| [deleted]
| dale_glass wrote:
| The RFC is long obsolete. The world changed a lot since 1990.
| teddyh wrote:
| All the things which the RFC recommends _against_ are still
| all bad practices, for reasons which have not changed.
|
| Modern server "cattle" style naming, which I assume you have
| in mind, is actually _explicitly mentioned_ as a reasonable
| idea in the RFC text.
| dale_glass wrote:
| Some can be ignored in modern times.
|
| Eg, nothing wrong with naming the webserver simply "web".
| Particularly in modern times where it's going to be a
| VM/container, and never do anything else.
|
| Also nothing wrong with naming your laptop after yourself.
| Laptops weren't much of a thing in 1990, these days
| everyone at my company has their own. And seeing a login or
| packets on tcpdump from "bob.example.com" is very much
| helpful.
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| That's all well and good until you hire Web and Dev.
| zumu wrote:
| I'd like to welcome our newest team member, Cloud Prod!
| JohnFen wrote:
| > nothing wrong with naming the webserver simply "web"
|
| Until you have more than one webserver.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I used to carefully name all of our computers. Starting a few
| years ago, I stopped even knowing the names of most of the
| physical machines on my home network. Sure, I'd have to go to the
| DHCP reservations list to figure out the name of my kids'
| computers to remote into them.
|
| The VMs and containers on my proxmox server are all named after
| the service and a trailing number. Plex is plex1, file servers
| are fs#, unifi controller is unifi1, etc. Once having a VM or
| container became essentially free, it mostly eliminated the need
| to think up or remember names.
| Daub wrote:
| When I was a student, I called my computer 'brain in a jar'.
| davidblue wrote:
| Though I can't imagine this is going to be particularly
| constructive, I've spent a lifetime on the lookout for any
| opportunity to brag about the names I've given various hardware
| devices because they're quite funny.
|
| Perhaps - for end users/non-admins - it'd be best to point first
| to a list of "favorite" names??
|
| Here are my favorites of mine, which have all notably performed
| the _function_ of a unique system name quite admirably:
|
| - Gravel (iPhone 8 Plus)
|
| - Jorts (iPhone 12 Pro Max)
|
| - Hildur (Desktop PC)
|
| - [Kudzu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kudzu) (iPad Pro)
|
| - Winterkorn (Wireless OBD2 Scanner)
| farnerup wrote:
| The best theme is to use brands of scotch.
| forinti wrote:
| A friend of mine used liquor names and put the corresponding
| bottle on top of each machine.
| [deleted]
| ahofmann wrote:
| Back in the day, we named the computers of our customers by tv
| shows or movies (futurama) and the disks inside them after the
| characters (fry, zoidberg, etc.). Worked well.
| ta8903 wrote:
| I remember a site that had a long list of themed names sorted by
| the number of elements in a set. Eg. 7 colours of a rainbow, 8
| planets, etc.
|
| I lost it and can't for the life of me remember what it was
| called. Anyone have an idea?
| gajon wrote:
| My computers and server are named: endgame,
| vortex, breakpoint, lucretia, hangar18, shewolf
|
| Megadeth song names.
| yazantapuz wrote:
| I use macross characters' names to baptize my computers.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| At home, I use characters from the first anime I watched as a
| digisub concurrent with it airing in Japan. It had considerably
| more female characters than male, so I use the male names for
| printers.
| euroderf wrote:
| What, no mention here of Japanese movie monsters ? It is a fine
| sysadmin tradition.
|
| godzilla and then the entire gallery of mutant rogues.
| Vpr99 wrote:
| Growing up, my dad named all his computers after native trees and
| plants where we were living. (e.g. Redwood) I've carried on doing
| that! Currently the main computers in the house are Cottonwood,
| Prickly Pear, Hackberry, and Honeylocust.
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| I name my wifi SSID after the last place I lived.
| TRiG_Ireland wrote:
| My phone's wifi hotspot is named Telcontar, meaning Strider
| in Quenya. It seemed somehow appropriate.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| I like that.
| digging wrote:
| Texas?
|
| I like that scheme. I find it meaningful to name things in my
| life after things in my natural environment. Helps me remember
| that I exist inside it.
| icepat wrote:
| I have for a while, and will for the foreseeable future, name my
| computers `terminal`. It started as a joke, but has turned into a
| habit. Every device I own is named that, with the exception of my
| cellphone, which is named `phone`.
| innerbits wrote:
| I use IATA (3 letters) or ICAO (4 letters) airport codes which
| make for nice and short host names.
| alchemist1e9 wrote:
| That's a good one! I'll probably steal that in the future. I
| like systems which have a long human name and a shorter code.
| Very nice.
| jmbwell wrote:
| I would argue metadata does not belong in a device name.
| Location, OS, etc., should all be tracked in the device
| management system.
|
| The impulse to encode lots of metadata in a device name is
| reasonable, but less is more. Location, user, application, even
| OS can all change. What then does it mean for the device name?
|
| And how often do you need to distinguish between a laptop and a
| desktop, really?
|
| Name things uniquely, and as little beyond that as possible. If
| the system generates its own unique default (Windows) or manages
| its human-readable hostname on its own (Mac), use that. Let your
| device management tools tell you where it is, what model device
| it is, what OS it runs, etc., not to mention countless other
| things you'll never fit in a name.
|
| I used to make exceptions for infrastructure, but with automated
| network management tools, I don't even bother with that anymore.
| All that matters is that a device is represented in a database by
| a primary key, and I don't even care what that is.
|
| The best naming convention is not to bother with conventions at
| all. Let the machines do that work.
| XorNot wrote:
| Yep, this is my position. As soon as you do it, people are
| going to (1) try and squeeze more stuff in and then (2) the
| names become configured _somewhere_ and diverge from whatever
| the original purpose was.
|
| Another requirement is you want the names to be a sparse
| address space: there should _never_ be confuse-able or
| mistypable characters which drop you into another computer name
| - so systems like r0001, r0002, r0010 etc. should be right out.
|
| Finally you also want the name to be human pronounceable: if
| everything's going well, it'll never be said. When things are
| not going well though, you want it to be something that can be
| communicated verbally if you need to - i.e. over the phone, or
| across an office.
|
| Hence, word-lists are _ideal_ as hostnames. Keep them short to
| around 2-3 syllables. They must be meaningless (and thus also
| not _imply_ meaning). Any other information you need should
| come out of the CMDB. If you need more specific info hanging
| around, then you DNS and CNAME 's to set up aliases for things
| like trying to SSH into "the machine at these rack coordinates"
| and keep that information updated from your CMDB.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I agree with everything you said here. I also have another
| rule: I never reuse a machine name. If a machine gets
| retired, the name it had is retired along with it.
|
| I started doing that after a hard-to-diagnose problem that
| resulted from restoring a configuration file that referred to
| a machine that had been retired, but the name was reused,
| making it refer to the wrong machine.
| petsfed wrote:
| There's a tension here between the two user groups who need to
| interact with the name: whatever software system manages the
| things, and human beings.
|
| I worked on a system that had dozens of small-form-factor linux
| computers, that served as gateways for a fleet of thousands of
| bluetooth environmental sensors. Because of the nature of the
| facility construction, it was considerably easier to provision
| devices before deployment, then record location and other meta-
| data later. So the unique ID (a 16-digit hexadecimal number) in
| the system was completely disconnected from the metadata, but
| the common name of the device was defined almost entirely from
| the metadata. That also meant that while the unique ID was
| immutable and described a unique computer, the common name more
| described a location and purpose that a computer could be
| deployed to. Even so, that distinction lived waaay up in the
| facility management software design, and in practice, the only
| people even aware that the unique ID existed and was a distinct
| number from the "name", were the people tasked with
| provisioning the device for deployment.
|
| Plenty of orgs have multiple people named "Steve", a few even
| have multiple people named "Stephen A. Ambrose", but no good
| org has multiple employees with the same employee ID number.
| And to further that analogy, no good org expects its employees
| to completely ignore the human name in favor of the employee
| ID.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| > Name things uniquely, and as little beyond that as possible
|
| I think that points to UUID or an incrementing counter, but the
| incrementing counter may be harder to ensure uniqueness
| depending on how names are created (which can change in the
| future).
| xorcist wrote:
| It's incredibly useful to categorize hostnames. It won't
| encompass all possible information, but enough to know at a
| glance what you're dealing with. Hostnames end up in all sorts
| of places, backup files, monitoring systems etc, and being able
| to tell a webserver from a switch and prod from test makes life
| easier to everyone.
|
| The argument that equipment change location and uses sounds to
| me like an environment where disposing and creating new hosts
| is much too hard. The lifetime of a host should be simple and
| well defined such that no one is tempted to make such changes
| without decomissioning.
| jmbwell wrote:
| Ideally, endpoint devices are enrolled and provisioned
| automatically. Decommissioning is a few clicks. Service hosts
| are deployed and destroyed via ansible or orchestration.
|
| Backups, monitoring, logging, SIEM, etc. are integrated with
| the CMDB such that events and managed hosts are linked in
| both directions.
|
| If anything, I'm spoiled on having automated systems making
| lifecycle terribly easy. I would concede that's a blind spot
| in my perspective; many organizations aren't going to be
| similarly equipped. If such an organization is managing more
| than a few dozen devices, however, they may have bigger
| problems than naming.
| xorcist wrote:
| As it should be. Thus far, the people who advocate for the
| abolishing of host names have been the same people who lack
| lifecycle processes. I don't think this is a coincidence.
| Most people tend to solve the problems they can grasp, and
| it is hard to see what you lack.
| JohnFen wrote:
| The last company I worked switched to such a scheme for their
| servers, and it was not a good experience. The person who
| spearheaded it regretted the change.
|
| The problem was that you still have to consult a key in order
| to decipher the hostnames, and since the names were all
| similar to each other, mistakes were an everyday occurrence.
|
| Since you had to refer to documentation anyway, using more
| unique names would have reduced error and confusion.
| xorcist wrote:
| Same experience here.
|
| The metadata database for hosts starts looking an awful lot
| like DNS after a while.
| SkipperCat wrote:
| We always had the location in the name. It really helps when
| you have multiple data centers. If a machine was to move from
| one data center to another, it would be renamed (or more
| probably rebuilt).
|
| Each DC had a different business usage, so knowing that
| immediately gave you context of what that machine should be
| doing.
|
| We also would also have the environment (prod or dev) in the
| name. It just gave you an immediate understanding of the
| sensitivity of the machine and therefore stopped/warned folks
| from doing crazy things in prod.
|
| Of course, YMMV, but I've always been a fan of names which give
| you context. Too much can be annoying but a little goes a long
| way.
| jmbwell wrote:
| Sure. And I would add that application identifiers can be a
| different problem domain. `app-dev.houston-1.example.com`
| would be a perfectly reasonable name for an application,
| whether it resolves to a host or a load balancer or a CDN
| endpoint or whatever. The underlying machines I still don't
| really care about; they will register their availability in
| the cluster or whatever automatically, or else they'll get
| names like "db" and "web" in the docker-compose file, or what
| have you. But sure, where a human might reasonably need to
| enter a name for a resource in order to access it, a brief
| descriptive name makes sense.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I agree. I used to name my machines using metadata, but that
| became problematic after a while. When machines move or are
| repurposed, then you either have a misleading name or you have
| to rename the machine. I prefer to avoid both of those
| situations.
|
| That's why I switched to names that have no relationship with
| the particulars of the machines they are assigned to.
| michaelteter wrote:
| This brings back great and terrible memories.
|
| There were so many arguments between otherwise reasonable people
| over server names.
|
| Some went for cute, some for mythology, some planetary (which can
| be quite limiting if you stick with only the home solar system),
| and finally my favorite - the purpose-based, numerically
| suffixed.
| [deleted]
| LinuxBender wrote:
| I intentionally violate this RFC for workstations and laptops.
| Some applications leak client hostnames to remote servers. I
| prefer to keep it bland. For public servers I would say I am in
| alignment and would only add I keep server names and domain names
| programmatic, short and simple enough for anyone inebriated to
| type. It's worked out well thus far. uname -n
| localhost
| mrfinn wrote:
| Coolest thing I did in the past about that was to name the
| servers of a start up in which I participated after the
| characters/places of "The Odyssey": Penelope, Telemaco, Itaca...
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _RFC 1178: Choosing a Name for Your Computer_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35424550 - April 2023 (3
| comments)
|
| _RFC 1178: Choosing a name for your computer (1990)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26054014 - Feb 2021 (121
| comments)
|
| _Choosing a Name for Your Computer_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26027247 - Feb 2021 (1
| comment)
|
| _RFC 1178 - Choosing a name for your computer (1990)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16741009 - April 2018 (173
| comments)
|
| _Choosing a name for your computer_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5167998 - Feb 2013 (10
| comments)
|
| _Choosing names for your computers_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1290106 - April 2010 (86
| comments)
|
| _Choosing a Name for Your Computer_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=110017 - Feb 2008 (9
| comments)
| marymkearney wrote:
| Do named computers also develop traits or personalities? Fragile
| | sturdy, balky | cooperative, high-maintenance | easygoing,
| spiteful | nice, etc.? Like, "oh, there goes Icarus again, it's
| always been contrary."
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| I like tying the scheme to the domain. For instance, mine has
| always been starfleet.mil. Forever non-public domain. Lots of
| options for host names. (I've never been able to figure out a
| cohesive way to do this for Star Wars.)
|
| If you were going for deities, maybe olympus.<something> for
| Greek gods. Wherever the pantheon is supposed to be homed.
| Hinduism would give you more host names than you could (probably)
| ever use...
| pimlottc wrote:
| .mil is an valid (restricted) tld [0], and has been for a long
| time. And while starfleet.mil is still currently unregistered,
| I wouldn't be surprised if they changed given recent trends
| [1]...
|
| 0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/.mil
|
| 1: https://www.spaceforce.mil/
| lightspot21 wrote:
| Hmm, a similar scheme we used at a previous workplace - lots of
| references to ancient Greek philosophers, historians and of
| course deities.
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| I wanna try ancient Carthaginians: Hanno, Hamilcar, Hanno,
| Hannibal, Hanno, Hasdrubal, Hannibal, Hanno, Hannibal, Hanno,
| Hanno, and of course Hanno
| goodells wrote:
| Your mentioning the pantheon gave me a flashback to how one of
| my old companies named their non-prod environments. The dev
| environment services were named after all the Greek gods, and
| the QA/demo environment services after the Roman gods. It was
| so horribly confusing...
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| Yeah... I've seen this too. You really have to know your
| mythology to keep those 2 straight. I'd have made one of them
| Norse. ;-)
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Before I started using zfs and drive names stopped mattering,
| I'd name my personal storage drives after heroes from the
| Iliad, and the corresponding backup drives after the heroes'
| wives.
| lelag wrote:
| For people that likes to stay in a given theme: I worked in a
| company that was using pokemon names for hostnames. Given there
| seem to be close to a thousand of them now, it's probably not
| such a bad idea for a small network where you don't expect more
| than a few hundreds host at a given time.
| jhwhite wrote:
| I used to work for a state gov entity, one of the counties I
| worked with named their servers after Looney Toon characters. I
| always thought that was cool and fun. Where I worked named the
| servers after the departments. /sigh. Such boring.
| jl6 wrote:
| I have a series of VMs named after the elements, with the final
| octet of the IP address being the atomic number. Has worked well
| so far...
| johnchristopher wrote:
| What about VM with multiple NIC ?
| yabones wrote:
| By convention, all of your router interfaces (or multilayer
| switches) would have to be Hydrogen. Makes sense, given its
| abundance in the universe.
| rbanffy wrote:
| After trying to convince the Ubuntu petname package maintainer to
| make the source-code PEP-8 compliant, I went on to build a
| JavaScript clone based on the spy tools listed in the Vault-7
| leak. I called it `nsaname`.
|
| It's much more limited in possible combinations than petname, but
| it's perfect for naming secret projects.
|
| You can install it with `npm install nsaname`.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| > " _Some more suggestions are: mythical places (e.g., Midgard,
| Styx, Paradise), mythical people (e.g., Procne, Tereus, Zeus),
| killers (e.g., Cain, Burr, Boleyn), babies (e.g., colt, puppy,
| tadpole, elver), collectives (e.g., passel, plague, bevy, covey),
| elements (e.g., helium, argon, zinc)_ "
|
| Mildly recursively, when I play at trying to name all the
| elements[1] in fifteen minutes, I think of the sets of things
| elements are named after. Geographic places (Europium, Londinium,
| Americium, Californium), laboratories (Berkelium, Lawrencium),
| people (Einsteinium, Nobelium, Curium, Seaborgium), astronomical
| things (Helium, Selenium, Plutonium, Uranium, Mercurium), things
| known in the ancient world (Silver/Argentum, Lead/Plumbum)...
| although it's never enough for me to get all of them.
|
| [1] https://www.sporcle.com/games/g/elements
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| Boleyn a "killer" seems a bit of a stretch. I counter-propose
| "HenryVIII" to take her place.
| killjoywashere wrote:
| for personal computers, I go for an uncommon four-letter. No
| curse words though.
| riffic wrote:
| it's probably a good idea to put "RFC 1178" in the title.
| aftbit wrote:
| My personal laptops, workstations, and servers (all pets of
| course) have the following names, in no particular order:
|
| tron, finch, wintermute, sparrowhawk, axolotl, rook, moneta,
| mengpo, odessa, ithaca, turing, lovelace
| linker3000 wrote:
| I had a small DC at work that included Turing and Lovelace,
| plus: Wilkes, Babbage amd Hopper.
| vincent-manis wrote:
| My home wifi SSID is Marsnet, and my machines are all named
| after Martian surface features. So there's olympus and
| pavonis, arcadia and xanthe, and so on. I'm typing this on
| syrtis-major. I'm hoping not to run out of surface features.
| [deleted]
| mikro2nd wrote:
| One place we named all the (Unix) machines with names beginning
| with a 'C': cbed, cnic, cweed, csun (a Sun box, of course!),
| cmen,... We were (obvs?) developing in C, and our office was
| known in the company as "C-centre". All seemed to make sense at
| the time.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| > cweed
|
| Obviously programming in C wasn't your only favorite pastime.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| lots of scuba diver sysops out there!
| deaddabe wrote:
| cmon
| __d wrote:
| There's a cattle vs pets argument here.
|
| When naming "pets", thematic names are nice: Tolkien characters,
| words-starting-with, deities, elements, plants, animals, etc.
|
| When naming "cattle", schemes that have fairly intricate coded
| meanings and numerical elements generate things like LDW21-0743
| (London, Desktop, Windows, 2021, number 743).
|
| Somewhere between 50 and 100 machines and you need to transition,
| and it can be surprisingly traumatic.
| kbob wrote:
| The RFC was written in 1990. Very few computers were cattle
| then.
| amelius wrote:
| I named my pet after my neighbor.
| teddyh wrote:
| Do you call your neighbor "Human Nigel"1?
|
| 1. https://twitter.com/DawgBelly/status/862786851072909312
| schwartzworld wrote:
| We have a greyhound, and they are closer to cattle than pets at
| the beginning of their lives. Each dog has a unique combination
| of numbers tattooed in their ears. Then they are named
| according to a weird convention where litter-mates share a
| "first name" while having their own unique "second name". For
| example, my greyhound was named Del Sol Madison, and she had
| litter mates with names like Del Sol Martin, Del Sol Maxine,
| etc. These names are used for identifying the dogs, but they
| are not trained to respond to them because they aren't pets.
| Once we got her, we called her Maddie and that's just been her
| name ever since.
| JohnFen wrote:
| For naming all the machines on my home network, I go with the
| theme of "kinds knives or blades". I like the symbolism (knives
| are symbolic of logical thought).
|
| The only problem is that I have a lot of machines, and am running
| out of names!
| tacitusarc wrote:
| My fiance runs a knife factory. There are so many names.
| Perhaps you just need to embrace some of the more descriptive
| names! "Folding Hunter Knife - Nickel Silver Drop Point"
| JohnFen wrote:
| That would be one way! But I also want the names to be
| relatively short and contain no spaces or non-alphanumeric
| characters, because I type them in a lot.
|
| I still have 20 or so left on my "future names" list. I'm now
| into names of knife types in the African continent.
| Macha wrote:
| I've had the same naming scheme for my personal devices for about
| 15 years now. The word list is from a show I was watching at the
| time. Workstations are protagonists, servers are antagonists,
| mobile devices are child characters.
|
| Last year I finally exhausted names from the first show and added
| a second one to my name list.
|
| Is it more logical to name them things like phone-2023-1 and
| cloud-server-5 - sure. But the reality is my personal
| infrastructure is going to max out at like 40 concurrent devices,
| and that's including stuff like network devices which does get
| more "practical" names (like office-ap-1, tv-switch-1) since I
| rarely ssh into them. So may as well have a little fun with
| naming
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| Some of my machines are references to LoadingReadyRun's
| Installation Anxiety[0][1] sketch. When I was in college ~15
| years ago, I built a file server, so I named it _toilet_. I
| eventually put a web server on it too, and when I replaced the
| hardware, I named it _gram_ , but my blog code still retains the
| old name[2]. And yes, I named my router _dishwasher_.
|
| I'm dead set against IoT, so naming my computers after fixtures
| or appliances hasn't caused conflicts.
|
| [0]
| https://wiki.loadingreadyrun.com/index.php/Installation_Anxi...
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajW2fDy41fY
|
| [2] https://github.com/theandrewbailey/toilet
| neilv wrote:
| The first big Unix workstations site I worked at, at the same
| time as this RFC, the head sysadmin started naming SPARCstations
| after vacation destinations she liked (`cozumel`, `stcroix`,
| etc.).
|
| I guess it brightened up the all-gray cubicle farm.
|
| My hostname idea was to name network printers after trees (e.g.,
| `pine`, `elm`).
|
| You can also make the hostname work with the FQDN. I once got the
| hostname `ilove.mit.edu`. I later got them to rename it to
| `ihavealovehaterelationshipwith.mit.edu`.
| nbk_2000 wrote:
| In case anyone wants to see the Gary Larson illustration
| mentioned in the RFC:
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/2245214_Choosing_a_...
| sowbug wrote:
| unfair-wagon quiz-rocket lake-flag
|
| These seem to adhere to the guidelines. I have been using
| https://iancoleman.io/bip39/ for a while to name VMs. Generate 15
| words, pick a pair that I can visualize, and I'm done.
| miroljub wrote:
| I use porn star names to name computers in my company network.
|
| It's easy to claim that "lisaann" and "peternorth" are just
| randomly invented names, and then watch some corporate drone
| blushing and struggling when asked to explain why they find those
| names inappropriate.
| urda wrote:
| Big yikes, that's a hostile work environment and is a huge risk
| for your HR I am sure. I would not be comfortable working with
| such conditions, and would be sure to let my HR rep know.
| danwee wrote:
| Perhaps I missed the irony. But why do you think that is
| hostile?
| tom_ wrote:
| I suspect you'd just disagree or fail to understand if it
| were explained. Safest to just trust the implied advice in
| this instance!
| stouset wrote:
| "We'll _I_ don't find it inappropriate so it's completely
| impossible for me to bother trying to understand why
| someone else might."
| [deleted]
| GMoromisato wrote:
| Most porn objectifies women and many employees are women
| who do not like being objectified.
|
| Perhaps I missed the irony.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| [flagged]
| Zetice wrote:
| Wrong battle, my friend. Directly referencing porn in the
| workplace creates a hostile work environment because porn
| is a taboo subject that offends some people, like it or
| not.
| danwee wrote:
| Got it. I guess I'm slow today.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| How do you know they're porn names to begin with?
|
| That's what makes it funny.
| sosborn wrote:
| "Funny" and "Appropriate" don't always occupy the same
| space.
| mypastself wrote:
| "I've been informed that miroljub has named company computers
| after adult film stars. I believe this is inappropriate."
|
| No blushing is required.
| detuur wrote:
| It only takes the first time someone types in `lisaann` in
| their address bar instead of `lisaann.local`.
|
| Fwiw, I believe they're either making this up or they work
| for a company that's too small to have an HR department.
| rbanffy wrote:
| After googling lisaann, I have to say she deserves some
| respect for parodying Sarah Palin.
| p0pcult wrote:
| [flagged]
| nly wrote:
| We have services named after convicted murderers at my place of
| work.
| piloto_ciego wrote:
| Not only do I want this to be true, I want you to work for a
| major government agency like the post office.
| fknorangesite wrote:
| Yikes.
| atoav wrote:
| If I'd notice that thing I would probably just silently judge
| you and file you into the "immature edgy teenager"-category and
| avoid giving you any meaningful decisions from now on.
| Zetice wrote:
| Don't worry, he doesn't actually do this, mostly because
| admitting you know who those people are isn't _nearly_ as bad
| as actively using those names in a workplace.
| [deleted]
| TRiG_Ireland wrote:
| Are porn actors actually famous? I think the only one I could
| name off the top of my head is Brent Corrigan.
| masfuerte wrote:
| Stormy Daniels is the only one I know of, but her job is
| somewhat incidental to her fame.
| ogurechny wrote:
| Yeah, it would only be meaningful for people who already have
| some mental images of said [porn]stars. The rest would just
| see random names. For that, actual random name generators
| exist. It's not hard to make your own, and compile a database
| of distinctly sounding and distinctly written first and last
| names. Then, of course, a company would hire someone with
| exact same "impossible" name.
| ncarroll wrote:
| I name for expected performance. A remote server named Arnie
| should be strong, reliable and always come back. A music server
| named Elvis serves music with elements from multiple genre and
| not mind being told what to do by someone who knows a lot less
| about how it does what it does (that'd be me) than it does. A
| back-up server named Methuselah should not die for a very, very,
| very long time. So far, it's been a successful scheme.
|
| Edited for missing words.
| lexicality wrote:
| I very much disagree with the _Don 't choose a name after a
| project unique to that machine_ section.
|
| If you know a machine (especially a server!) is going to be used
| for one thing, name it after that thing. If you get a second one,
| you wipe both and rename them to thing-1 and thing-2.
|
| If you move a machine, you absolutely wipe it!
|
| "I named the new search server "gohan" because the original
| search server was called "goku" because he's searching for the
| dragon balls" is cute on the surface, but then you have to
| explain to everyone that joke and then they have to remember it.
| No one's going to be confused by "search-new-2021".
| dale_glass wrote:
| That's from 1990, which is firmly from the "pet" era, not
| "cattle".
|
| Computers were scarce and expensive, virtualization wasn't a
| thing. Any random machine might turn out to do DHCP, FTP and
| payroll, just because the software had to go somewhere and that
| particular machine had the spare resources and was hooked up to
| the right network.
| remram wrote:
| That's a terrible name. New things don't stay new, do you just
| wipe it and reinstall it as "old" when it's not so new anymore?
| JohnFen wrote:
| > If you get a second one, you wipe both and rename them to
| thing-1 and thing-2.
|
| Am I the only one who finds it a pain in the butt to rename an
| existing machine? So many things have to be updated when I do
| that...
| vermilingua wrote:
| Culture Ship names [1] have served me well for many years now. I
| thought I'd have run out by now, but coming up with variations
| has extended the pool quite a bit.
|
| [1] https://theculture.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_spacecraft
| Eric_WVGG wrote:
| Same :)
|
| but after a decade or so I decided to flip to "side characters
| from Adventure Time" (currently writing from Huntress Wizard,
| tethered to Rootbeer Guy)
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| They're just so long though! :B
|
| `ssh foo@the-precise-nature-of-the-catastrophe`
| darkstar999 wrote:
| I don't know much about RFCs. It's amusing to see this doc cut
| into "pages". I wonder if there's a meta-RFC proposing that this
| was no longer needed.
| justinlloyd wrote:
| The RFC is for a different time and place. Though some of the
| principles still stand and I have deployed/used many of them, but
| not all are applicable.
|
| I'm not saying my scheme is perfect, or even very good, but it
| works for my needs and I've used the following convention for
| around 30+ years. I've got two schemes, one for small
| sites/personal installations, and one for big sites.
|
| w for workstations. t for tables. p for printers. c for cameras.
| a for access points. s for servers. m for mobiles/cellphones. v
| for vms. i for iot devices. u for "devices we don't know how to
| designate." x for sensors, e.g water leak sensor, package
| delivery box sensor.
|
| Obviously if you only have three devices in your entire home, it
| doesn't really make sense to have a "naming scheme."
|
| For personal installations and small sites (not an exhaustive
| list): a-studio-ap6 (access point in studio)
| a-catbathroom-ap6pro (access point in cats' bathroom)
| a-workshop-ap6 (access point in the workshop) a-rv-aplr
| (access point in the rv) w-lloyd-vr (workstation,
| household VR/gaming computer) w-justin-storm
| (workstation, storm is the CPU case manufacturer)
| l-justin-surfacebook2 (my surface laptop) l-joyce-
| surfacebook2 (wife's surface laptop) l-joyce-
| surfacestudio (wife's surface laptop) l-justin-mbp2013
| (my old macbook) p-office-hp3600 (office printer)
| p-workshop-konica (konica minolta printer in workshop)
| p-office-canon (office printer) v-justin-ubuntu
| (virtualized linux) v-justin-arch (virtualized linux)
| v-justin-win10 (virtualized linux) t-lloyd-weather
| (samsung table for weather) t-lloyd-ipad00
| t-lloyd-ipad01 c-lloyd-frontdoor (camera at front door)
| c-lloyd-garagedoor (camera on outside of garage door)
| c-lloyd-garageceiling (camera on the garage ceiling)
| s-lloyd-main (main home server) s-lloyd-backup (backup
| server) s-lloyd-storage (backup server at the storage
| locker) s-lloyd-cloud (our racked server in some midwest
| datacenter) s-lloyd-rv (server in the rv)
| m-joyce-pixel6 (wife's cellphone) m-justin-pixelpro7
| (cellphone belonging to me) m-justin-note20 (cellphone
| belonging to me) m-justin-iphone13 (cellphone belonging
| to me)
|
| The local machine is given the name, though some cannot be easily
| renamed, or they have a restriction such as NETBIOS name length,
| and then the MAC is also set with a name on the router too, so
| magic packets and other tools know what the device is named even
| if the device is not broadcasting any name.
|
| It helps with identifying mystery devices on the network, and who
| owns the device. I apply the same principle to naming cats and
| people. "grey-cat", "black-cat", "fuzzy-black-cat", "pink-human",
| "mao" (cat), "cat", "cath" (also cat), "orange-cat", "chat" (also
| cat), "gatto" (cat).
|
| For large sites with dozens or hundreds of servers or multiple
| sites/data centers:
|
| IATA codes with rack and machine name and absolutely nothing
| creative, and clear separators between each part. e.g.
| lax-r01-s17. And then I make sure that any publicly accessible
| machines sit on their own "prod" domain separate from the
| company's main domain, e.g. hn-prod.com, or bigcorp-prod.com
| causi wrote:
| I'm boring. I always just name my computers their CPU name. Like
| my previous desktop before my current one was "4670K".
| once_inc wrote:
| w-what happens when you replace the cpu?
| tored wrote:
| The RFC allows renaming of computers. I have done that a few
| times.
| freedude wrote:
| I strive for a list of names that are shorter than 6 characters
| each. Usually it will follow a theme. In 20+ years of IT I have
| set up a couple of networks of systems.
|
| Some past themes... Characters of the current book series I am
| reading. Hunger Games, Star Wars, Star Trek, C. S. Lewis Novels,
| Tolkien Novels, Louis L'Amour Novels
|
| Trees, plants, flowers, etc...
|
| Clouds
|
| Snakes, birds, etc...
|
| The important thing is to be unique, memorable and thwart the
| 'cattle' people.
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