Nothing works but logging in. (hosts file issues?)

i had to mess with my hosts file in order to get the messenger working inside my lan

originally it looked like this

127.0.0.1 be #“be” is my hostname on my lan[/b]

but in order to get presence and messaging working right in the lan i had to change it to look like this

127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost be[/b]

so everything was working fine, and i wanted to get remote clients logged in. so, like every other service i host, i log my remote clients into a URL i registered with a service that links my dynamic ip to it.

they are able to log in, but presence doesnt work, nor do chatrooms, IM etc.

so in the admin console i changed my domain name to bmy.gotdns.com (the url from the dynamic ip to url service), and it still didnt work.

so i figure the next step must be to again edit the hosts file with different combinations of 127.0.0.1 and bmy.gotdns.com, and i still cant seem to get it working.

do i need to change my actual computers name? should i change the localhost.localdomain localhost to something else? im experimenting but i cant seem to figure it out.

Try emptying your hosts file (except for the 127.0.0.1 localhost entry perhaps) and changing the name of your computer to bmy. See if that works.

On a sidenote: naming your computer ‘‘be’’ might get confusing, as that’'s a valid top level domain (for Belgium).

my hostname is now “bmy”

127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost bmy

presence still isnt working though now people see eachother when they are in chatrooms

i dont understand the layout of the hosts file. do i need to change the localhost.localdomain to something?

i guess ill look into it

What OS are you running?

I’'m guessing *nix of some flavour…

Standard layout of /etc/hosts in *nix for your site is:

127.0.0.1 bmy localhost.localdomain localhost

For Windows, your looking at c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts and it’'s format is a bit more simple:

127.0.0.1 bmy

As far as I can tell, the domain ‘‘localdomain’’ doesn’‘t exist on your end. In that light: configuring it in your hosts file (a file that helps you resolve hostnames to ip’'s) makes no sense.

I’'d drop everything from that file, see if that works.

if it doesn’'t, add

127.0.0.1 bmy

optionally followed by the word ‘‘localhost’’ (without ‘’)

If that doesn’'t work, replace that line with this:

127.0.0.1 bmy.gotdns.com

again, optionally followed by ‘‘localhost’’