[cobalt-users] RAQ - Basic questions about host names.

["Tricon Systems Ltd." <lists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Greetings to all.  I'm a new RAQ owner and am pleased to see the high
quality and level of participation on the list.  Well I've scoured all the
archived threads, RTFM and read all of the online info, but still have a few
basic questions.

First of all I have a RAQ 3i with 64mb and a 13GB drive.  Intended usage is
hosting of 2 of my own domains, with mail, and 3 or 4 virtually hosted
client domains.  More will follow, but I'm not going into the hosting
business in a big way :-)

I'm using named hosts with a single IP.  The configuration is fine and
external connectivity is working properly. I'm not using the built-in DNS
yet, instead have "self managed" DNS service from MYDNS.COM, so I can create
A and MX records as needed.

What I can't seem to understand is how the RAQ uses hostnames.  If I give
the RAQ a hostname of raq.abc.com how do you alias www.abc.com? Through an A
record?  If I call it www.abc.com then the mail server becomes www.abc.com .
I don't want a pop/smtp server with the name www.abc.com , whilst legal it
is highly confusing and "kludgy".  Since all the virtual sites use the same
mail host I'd really like to have mail.abc.com, without making that the
default host name.  So I need to have www.abc.com, mail.abc.com and
raq.abc.com all pointing to the "main" domain.  Then assign www.xyz.com and
mail.xyz.com for a virtual site, so users can configure their mail clients
easily.  And whilst I'm on the subject who the h**l would want an email
address of "user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx"?   Bizarre.

One other thing, the main log has this entry every 15 minutes:
127.0.0.1 - - [04/Jan/2000:17:15:01 -0500] "HEAD / HTTP" 200 0 "-" "-"
What is it?  An error or normal?


Thanks in advance,

Nicholas Braak
DSLadvisors.com
"The Broadband Solution Providers"
nickb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx