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In the field of domain name there comes a concept about a fully qualified domain name or commonly known with its acronym FQDN. Many question about this term and many of those who are veterans on the domain name field often complained about a problem simply stated as 'could not determine the server's fully qualified domain name'. Due to the impact of such problem in the lives of many people who loves the internet, there came a concept of 'could not determine the server's fully qualified domain name'.

'Could not determine the server's fully qualified domain name' is the common reaction or complaint by most people. In fact, when you search for the reason of the peoples' complaint that they could not determine the server's fully qualified domain name, you will end up still going through the problem of 'could not find the server's fully qualified domain name' since there are so many complaints on the web about such matter.

Now, since many of you are still not aware about the real nature of this thing, it is then very important to know the concept behind the Fully Qualified Domain Name or FQDN. So what then is a fully qualified domain name?

The fully qualified domain name or FQDN is actually the complete domain name for a particular computer or host on the internet. This is consisting of two major parts and these are the host name and the domain name. One of the best examples to show this nature of FQDN is the URL http://kate.ucs.indiana.edu. This is a FQDN for an email server Kate on the Shakespeare system at Indiana University Bloomington. The host name then is kate which is found within the domain name http://ucs.indiana.edu.

Now that you know the nature of FQDN, it is then interesting to know the reason why people complaint that they could not determine the server's fully qualified domain name. It is considered that the Red Hat Update Agent, Red Hat Network Registration Client, and the Apache HTTP Server are certainly very prone to 'could not determine the server's fully qualified domain name' problem with the RHN applications issuing mistakes of 'host not found' and the web server stating 'could not determine the server's fully qualified domain name' upon failing to start.

Furthermore, the 'could not determine the server's fully qualified domain name' problem generally roots from the /etc/hosts file. It is considered by the experts that you may confirm this by inspecting /etc/nsswitch.conf, which then defines the methods and the sequence by which domain names are set on. In the process of tackling the 'could not determine the server's fully qualified domain name' problem, the etc/hosts information is in fact examined first, and then followed by the Network Information Service if applied, and after that the Domain Name System followed. So to tackle the 'could not determine the server's fully qualified domain name' problem, it is important that one of those tools will succeed for the Apache HTTP Server to start and the RHN client applications to work.

Given such fact, it is then very significant that you know how to operate those tools since the 'could not determine the server's fully qualified domain name' is somewhat a serious problem. So if you don't know everything about the 'could not determine the server's fully qualified domain name', then you better contact an expert.