More on machine names and spam

Well, we had lots of feedback on the topic of naming servers and PCs after our column of a few weeks ago. Reader Kes Masalaitis wrote, "we got our first RISC machine, which was way faster than the CISC machines we had. I was the sysadmin, and I named the machine 1fastmf. I also named a machine xlr8."

An astronomical theme has been the choice of many organizations. Reader Mike Palombo said, "Our organization named our first eight servers after planets - we were told to skip Uranus . . . they wanted to avoid announcements . . . such as: Uranus will be down for an hour [and] there's a tape stuck in Uranus."

Reader Chip Orr wished his employer didn't require the use of "functional" host names "like RBSMADECWS058, which only makes sense if you know our organizational and building codes."

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Well, we had lots of feedback on the topic of naming servers and PCs after our column of a few weeks ago. Reader Kes Masalaitis wrote, "we got our first RISC machine, which was way faster than the CISC machines we had. I was the sysadmin, and I named the machine 1fastmf. I also named a machine xlr8."

An astronomical theme has been the choice of many organizations. Reader Mike Palombo said, "Our organization named our first eight servers after planets - we were told to skip Uranus . . . they wanted to avoid announcements . . . such as: Uranus will be down for an hour [and] there's a tape stuck in Uranus."

Reader Chip Orr wished his employer didn't require the use of "functional" host names "like RBSMADECWS058, which only makes sense if you know our organizational and building codes."

Chip also wrote that, "years ago I stumbled upon several amusing host names used by the respiratory sciences department at a medical school. They had hosts named 'mucous,' 'phlegm,' 'tuberculosis,' etc. Their naming convention cracked me up, although I also felt the need to wash my hands after accessing any of their systems."

Dan Wakeman confessed that, "In my first job out of college I inherited a NetWare 3.10 server named Elmer, as in Fudd. It was a no-name brand and had been set up by one of the programmers. That server gave us grief on and off for months. My boss . . . said 'Dan, we've got to change the name of the server. We're having cartoon calamities.'"

Reader Michael Miller said his company's naming scheme "isn't terribly innovative - in fact, it's mentioned in RFC 1178. I use element names for systems that aren't exposed to the outside world."

Michael pointed out that the scheme has a couple of advantages: "First, each name is tied to a number, which becomes part of the IP address of the system. For example, hydrogen could be 10.0.0.1 and berkelium could be 10.0.0.97. That means I don't need to carry around a list of host names and their IP addresses, or be able to reach NIS, LDAP or even a host file. I've got a periodic table on my desk and one on my PDA, but I find I don't need them much anymore."

The second advantage is "the names don't have any inherent meaning with respect to usage, but there are groupings available for uses: noble gases, lanthanides, actinides, number of valence electrons, etc."

Michael pointed out that "the biggest downside is that some of the elements have names that annoy some spelling-challenged users. I might argue that this is a feature."

We'll wrap up this week with an anti-spam utility we've been running for a couple of weeks called Qurb from Qurb, Inc.

Qurb is a challenge/response system for Outlook and Outlook Express that prevents "unapproved" senders' e-mail from appearing in your in-box until they do nothing more complex than respond to a challenge message.

The first time Outlook or Outlook Express is launched after installing Qurb the program will scan all messaging-related folders, excluding any unread in-box messages (they could be spam) and any folders with names containing the words "junk," "deleted" or "spam." The result will be a list of your approved senders.