OS X fqdn issues reappeared

[j-gray 35]

Previous thread for reference below.

We used to populate 'HostName' in our imaging script for OS X devices. We found that got populated into kern.hostname and caused clients to report with just hostname and not FQDN.

Our fix was to clear the HostName value so it was blank. Then, kern.hostname would actually populate correctly with the FQDN.

However, now we're finding that if HostName is set, kern.hostname = HostName. When we clear HostName, kern.hostname becomes %ComputerName%.local and no longer reflects the FQDN.

Has the agent behavior changed with later releases? I'm not sure why it's now reverting to hostname.local  These systems are all AD domain-joined.

 

 

 

[j-gray 35]

More testing: if HostName is blank, kern.hostname = computername.local

If HostName = computername, kern.hostname = computername

So where is kern.hostname getting its value when HostName is blank?

Edited August 31, 2020 by j-gray

[j-gray 35]

I found an issue with Reverse DNS in our environment. Once that was fixed and OS X clients started registering, the issue was resolved.

So the following appears to be the case:

1. If HostName = abcd, kern.hostname returns abcd
2. If HostName = blank, kern.hostname returns Reverse DNS value (typically FQDN)
   • If Reverse DNS value is not present, kern.hostname returns abcd.local

So it seems in order to get this to work, one must either 1) make HostName = FQDN, or 2) leave HostName blank and ensure Reverse DNS registers FQDN.

[MartinK 378]

On 9/1/2020 at 4:54 PM, j-gray said:

I found an issue with Reverse DNS in our environment. Once that was fixed and OS X clients started registering, the issue was resolved.

So the following appears to be the case:

1. If HostName = abcd, kern.hostname returns abcd
2. If HostName = blank, kern.hostname returns Reverse DNS value (typically FQDN)
   • If Reverse DNS value is not present, kern.hostname returns abcd.local

So it seems in order to get this to work, one must either 1) make HostName = FQDN, or 2) leave HostName blank and ensure Reverse DNS registers FQDN.

Thanks for confirmation, as we were not able to find any differences from previous versions. We do rely on data provided by system (except one release of ERA Agent where custom logic was used, but it was not working for most of users). Unfortunately there seems to be no standard way of how to configure macOS systems in domain environment, which complicates our logic of fetching hostname/FQND. Therefore we use only data provided by system and easilly configurable, so that users can at least configure systems to provide correct data.