InetAddress.getLocalHost() throws UnknownHostException

freebsd, java, opensolaris

Solution

In good tradition, I can answer my own question once again:

It seems that `InetAddress.getLocalHost()` ignores the `/etc/resolv.conf`, but only looks at the `/etc/hosts` file (where I hadn't specified anything besides `localhost`). Adding the IP and hostname to this file solves the problem and the exception is gone.

Another answer is almost correct and I got hint from above and my problem get resolved...Thanks.

But to improve this, I am adding steps-by-steps changes, so that it will be helpful for even naive users.

Steps:

Open `/etc/hosts`, the entries might look like below.

 127.0.0.1   localhost localhost.localdomain localhost4 localhost4.localdomain4  
 ::1         localhost localhost.localdomain localhost6 localhost6.localdomain6

You need to add one more line above of this by any editor like `vi` or `gedit` (e.g. `<your-machine-ip> <your-machine-name> localhost`).

 192.168.1.73 my_foo localhost

Now, overall file may look like this:

192.168.1.73 my_foo localhost
127.0.0.1    localhost localhost.localdomain localhost4 localhost4.localdomain4
::1          localhost localhost.localdomain localhost6 localhost6.localdomain6

- Just save it and run again your Java code... your work is done.

Problem

I am testing our server-application (written Java) on different operating systems and thought that OpenSolaris (2008.11) would be the least troublesome due to the nice Java integration. Turns out I was wrong, as I end up with a UnknownHostException ``` try { computerName = InetAddress.getLocalHost().getHostName(); if (computerName.indexOf(".") > -1) computerName = computerName.substring(0, computerName.indexOf(".")).toUpperCase(); } catch (UnknownHostException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } ``` The output is: ``` java.net.UnknownHostException: desvearth01: desvearth01 at java.net.InetAddress.getLocalHost(InetAddress.java:1353) ``` However, `nslookup desvearth01` returns the correct IP address, and `nslookup localhost` returns `127.0.0.1` as expected. Also, the same code works perfectly on FreeBSD. Is there anything special to OpenSolaris that I am not aware of? Any hints appreciated, thanks.

Original source