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RFC 1178: Choosing a name for your computer (1990)

tools.ietf.org

31–40 of 128 posts

Re: RFC 1178: Choosing a name for your computer (1990)

#31
For personal machines I use fiction locations from media I enjoy. My laptop is Hyrule, my desktop is Konoha, and my Pi is MotherBase, but I spell mine all lowercase.

For servers I use for my roommates and I (Jellyfin and the like), we name them after the quirky students that go to our university that we appreciate.

Re: RFC 1178: Choosing a name for your computer (1990)

#32
post #3

Use anime character names. That way you have an excuse to collect cute artwork for these machines.

That's a great scheme. I hope that one day amongst the university computer labs named for Greek/Roman mythology or rock artists, we have a lab of anime characters. At least at my uni, I think a lot of people would get a kick out of that.

Re: RFC 1178: Choosing a name for your computer (1990)

#33
post #29

For personal stuff (and even early machines for some companies which blurred the lines) I always chose the names of forests in the Magic: the Gathering multiverse. I try and help keep this page updated purely for that purpose: https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Forest These days, for work, it’s just boring unambiguous stuff. I think with more cloud infrastructure and the rarity of shared unix servers with home directories f…

To date, Dryad Arbor is still one of the coolest cards in MtG, simply because of both the simplicity and the universality of its quote. When it came out, I was very surprised by the idea that a land could also be a creature. These days we have way wonkier mechanics, but that novelty along with the quote has a special place in my heart.

Re: RFC 1178: Choosing a name for your computer (1990)

#34
post #26

I use the wordlist from Oren Tirosh’s mnemonic encoding project: http://web.archive.org/web/20090918202746/http://tothink.com... I can't find the post that linked it, but it had a very nice scheme. EDIT: found it: https://mnx.io/blog/a-proper-server-naming-scheme/ EDIT2: one-liner to get a random word from the file: cat wordlist.txt | tail -n +2 | sed -E 's/\s*(\w+)\s+/\1\n/g' | sed -E '/^$/d' | shuf -n 1 i.e. | | |…

I use animals, mostly. Except any ARM-based device must be named after a limb or a part of a limb that is not an arm. It must.

I use food. Abstract, but also memorable.

Re: RFC 1178: Choosing a name for your computer (1990)

#35
post #2

I was expecting this to be a April Fools RFC [0]. I was disappointed when I checked the date. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_Fools%27_Day_Request_for...

On that note, I'm a bit surprised that RFC 2100 [1] hasn't seen any mention. It's quite relevant to the topic at hand.

[1] The Naming of Servers https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2100

Re: RFC 1178: Choosing a name for your computer (1990)

#36
The naming scheme I settled on for my devices was using ship names from World War 2.

- Device size and computing power maps roughly to the ship size: my desktop is named after a battleship, while my Kindle is named after a destroyer.

- Servers are always named after carriers. It just made sense to me somehow.

- Like the warships, the names can eventually get reused as the devices are replaced.

Re: RFC 1178: Choosing a name for your computer (1990)

#38
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use animals, mostly. Except any ARM-based device must be named after a limb or a part of a limb that is not an arm. It must.

I use food. Abstract, but also memorable.

Personally — since we're all chiming in — I use elements. My fallback DNS is a periodic table.

Re: RFC 1178: Choosing a name for your computer (1990)

#39

I use the wordlist from Oren Tirosh’s mnemonic encoding project: http://web.archive.org/web/20090918202746/http://tothink.com... I can't find the post that linked it, but it had a very nice scheme. EDIT: found it: https://mnx.io/blog/a-proper-server-naming-scheme/ EDIT2: one-liner to get a random word from the file: cat wordlist.txt | tail -n +2 | sed -E 's/\s*(\w+)\s+/\1\n/g' | sed -E '/^$/d' | shuf -n 1 i.e. | | |…

Once I was moved to a new team at work, and the team leader really wanted a team name. I generated like 5 or 10 words from /usr/share/dict/words, one of which was profanity. I could tell that everyone liked Team Profanity, but no one was brave enough to adopt it. I really wish we had, because there was much cursing on that team.

Re: RFC 1178: Choosing a name for your computer (1990)

#40
post #29

For personal stuff (and even early machines for some companies which blurred the lines) I always chose the names of forests in the Magic: the Gathering multiverse. I try and help keep this page updated purely for that purpose: https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Forest These days, for work, it’s just boring unambiguous stuff. I think with more cloud infrastructure and the rarity of shared unix servers with home directories f…

To date, Dryad Arbor is still one of the coolest cards in MtG, simply because of both the simplicity and the universality of its quote. When it came out, I was very surprised by the idea that a land could also be a creature. These days we have way wonkier mechanics, but that novelty along with the quote has a special place in my heart.

Yeah I’m always really sad it doesn’t make it into the MTGO cube.
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