[erlang-questions] what *exactly* are sname and name ?

[Gordon Guthrie]

Joe

The difference is whether or not you are using a fully qualified domain
name (FQDN) or a relative one.

The difference between the two is described in RFC 1034 Section 3.1
(http://www.rfc-archive.org/getrfc.php?rfc=1034)

Essentially if a machine knows what domain it is in it can refer to itself
by name only. For example my machines are all named after pokemon so in
theory I could e-mail around the house with addresses like:
gordonguthrie@REDACTED
root@REDACTED
orla@REDACTED

The local box will 'know' how to expand that name to the FQDN ie
gordonguthrie@REDACTED etc, etc...

Largely these days the FQDN is resolved via DNS and the local name via
/etc/hosts (on Linux anyway) but depending on your platform there may be a
range of resolution mechanisms...

Gordon