I’ve wanted to install pihole so I can access my machines via DNS, currently I have names for my machines in my /etc/hosts files across some of my machines, but that means that I have to copy the configuration to each machine independently which is not ideal.
I’ve seen some popular options for top-level domain in local environments are *.box or *.local.
I would like to use something more original and just wanted to know what you guys use to give me some ideas.
A customer of mine chose for his own domains… and it was his mistake that he wanted specific “cool top level domains” in his network for his factory, storage facility and vehicles on the road that connected with wifi at home.
He decided, and I realized immediately that this would be a bad idea (*cough* … no I didn’t… but lets pretend I did), that he wanted something that looked like;
I think he adopted the idea because I had a singular setup at my office/shop where my synology, placed in a 8U rack in the back on the 4th flloor with a hostname… just a hostname “I.am.on.the.forth.floor.in.the.back”. Just a singular name… I remember him laughing when he found the server where the hostname said it was.
So, the systems (electronic toolbag for in the trucks) installed in the trucks would only work a 100% if connected to the wifi at home base. All interfaces with any relation to the outside world had to be brought within the lan to be able to get to warehouse data, and the fabrication department (his pride and joy) just did what it always did… it fabricated stuff. All choices were made motivated by the path of least resistance.
Yeah… a lot of stuff didn’t work as planned. Mainly connectivity things that did not work as expected, misconfiguration of DHCP servers, VPN clients and all other types of “employee owned” gear that were unable to resolve the funky domains.
I started to protest, and explain why what I did was funny, but what he was doing was foolish… especially after I gave him a rough idea of what was neede to be done. I proposed a split dns solution with a real domain, even that would have been easier and less intrusive to work on or fix things in for sure… but it looked “less cool” according to his lordship. Customer is king is a stupid concept, but if the customer claims to be King, his highness can pay for the time required to serve him.
So…
Pick a singular host, get a real domain and setup a split DNS environment (easiest and funnest imo)… but if you don’t care (and why should you :)) pick something fun and cool that makes sense to use for you. All our suggestions are pure personal preference in the end :)