Jody, Everywhere I've worked (except my current employer, AFAICT) has had a system for naming servers internally (for reference to the machine in particular) and vhosts for the services themselves. When I worked at Tennessee (at the time, a strict Sun shop), all the servers were named after sun worshipping peoples. The development servers were named after MST3K notables. At Emory, the servers had inconsistent themes: some were chemists, some were mythical spider creatures. If I set up development a machine, it was always named after a Godzilla character. At Tech there seems to be no rhyme or reason to our hostnames and, like Dan laments, we have some servers named with products for hostnames: "Illiad", "Eres", etc. (sigh). I don't have any control over my development server names, here, either -- no system. Rob Casson told me that all the servers at Miami of Ohio are named after Sherlock Holmes characters. Personally, I find it helpful to have an internal name and public name to abstract the service from the "hardware". I imagine that might vary from person to person, though. -Ross. On 10/26/06, Jody Fagan <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > Dear Code4Lib folks, > > I'd like to write an anecdotal article about library server nomenclature > ... I'm for-sure that most librarians don't even know our servers have > names. I am hoping that some of you might be willing to share (off-list) > server names you have known in libraries, how/why you chose them, and > any random thoughts you have about them. Did you inherit them? Did you > get to pick them out? Do you think the whole idea of server names is > silly or do you secretly like the fact that your servers have names? > I am happy to guarantee anonymity (that is, I won't use your name or > institution in conjunction with any server names) unless you > specifically want to be identified or given credit for your statements. > I plan on sharing my institution's server names in my article, but not > say where they are from.... > > thanks for considering this, > > Jody > > -- > > Jody Condit Fagan > Digital Services Librarian, James Madison University > 540-568-4265 > [log in to unmask] > > "Machine. Unexpectedly, I'd invented a time" -- Alan Moore > http://wired.com/wired/archive/14.11/sixwords.html > >