Python on Linux: get host name in /etc/hostname

Question

From within a Python script I am trying to get the host name in a Linux box. It is a Debian GNU/Linux Amazon EC2 instance. I have set the correct name in /etc/hostname . The recommended solution socket.gethostname() is not working: it shows the ip- plus the IP tuple.

I have searched on StackOverflow and nothing is coming out, eg here . socket.getfqdn() is even worse: it yields ip-[IP tuple].eu-west-1.compute.internal .

Am I doing something wrong, or is there no clean solution to get the hostname in /etc/hostname ? Of course the back-up solution is to read the file etc/hostname itself, but something so inherently platform-dependent is somehow too aberrant. Thanks!

Answer 1

Try os.uname() . According to the doc , it is the second position in the tuple returned.

But, as the doc itself states, the "better way to get the hostname is socket.gethostname() or even socket.gethostbyaddr(socket.gethostname()) ."

Answer 2

The generic source for the hostname is hostname(1) . This program calls the equivalent of uname -n .

In Python, you can either use platform.node() or os.uname()[1] .

Answer 3

First of all, all credit should go to m1k3y02, who gave me the hint in a comment. Now, for the sake of posterity I will give the correct answer: my Amazon EC2 has not been rebooted in a long time. I set the hostname in /etc/hostname but it did not reach the system, as evidenced by uname -n . So simply running /etc/init.d/hostname.sh did the trick. After that, socket.gethostname() worked as intended.

The lesson here: first see if the system gets it, and only after that blame the language.

Answer 4

你试过socket.gethostbyaddr(socket.gethostname())吗？