Comments on: I need a new name convention

By: jonesy

jonesy — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 12:49:00 +0000

I like tying names to *some* aspect of the machine. Sometimes I tie it to function, but other times it’s other stuff. For example, we have a machine whose sole purpose in life is to respond to requests for licenses from matlab clients. I named that machine “dmv”, because that’s where you go for licenses. We have general purpose ‘cycle servers’ here at work - 4 of them - so we named them ’soak’, ‘wash’, ‘rinse’ and ’spin’. If we got more of them, we’d have to break that pattern, but chances are we’d want to group hardware purchased together in some way anyway.

However, a couple of years ago, I got a shiny new G4 Apple desktop, and I named it ‘gala’, which is an apple that starts with the letter G and is 4 characters long :-)

I really like the sushi name idea because most of the names are short. I don’t like long hostnames, but don’t know enough about sushi to go down that path.

By: wbilancio

wbilancio — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 01:50:33 +0000

You can use character names from tv series. I do that for my home network.

By: smed

smed — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 18:26:52 +0000

I’ve always used plants or trees for hostnames. I one studied horticulture and botany, so it wasn’t really a stretch.
I have on several occasions named various boxes “orion” from the great constellation, for no particular reason really, its just a neat name.
I think my most unique name was a fluke with about 10 seconds worth of thought in it, and that is my wife’s machine(my 7 year old Pentium 3), “boxcar”. As in “boxcar willie” I suppose…..not sure where that one came from.

I think the fish theme is cool, you’ve got a lot of material to work with.

By: Gregory Haase

Gregory Haase — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 19:51:45 +0000

After some consideration and thought - I think I figured it out. I’m going to mull it over for a few days before I make it a final decision, but I’m really leaning towards fish!

I’m not kidding - it’s a wonderful subject matter because there are so many species and varieties out there, that it should scale quite nicely. Also, it seems that there a lot of fish names that are 8 characters or less, which is nice and short.

So for Desktops, I’m going to use the names used for Sushi (Japanese names spelled with American characters or romanji): akami, unagi, toro, sake, hamachi, maguro, ebi, fugu, hirame, kani, saba, tai, tako, tobiko, uni, ikura.

For Servers and Peripherals, I’m going to use fresh and saltwater fish names: bass, bluegill, perch, pike, walleye, trout, striper, grouper, flounder, carp, gar, pickerel, dolphin, marlin, snapper, baracuda.

I can see the possibilities already - the firewall should be named “walleye”. And whatever gets named “striper” will have to have some kind of raid array - probably the file server. The LDAP server might be called “grouper”. And this Dell L433c that I just got back together from a collection of spare parts will most likely become “crappie”.