Naming Your Computers
There's a thread going on at reddit regarding an old FYI RFC about computer naming conventions. This made me think a bit about how I name my machines, and realize I don't really have a convention at all. Or, rather, I've had several over the years ranging from places/characters from books (from the traditional Lord of the Rings lore to science fiction) to famous scientists.
The machines I'm currently using are named like this:
- My main Windows laptop is currently named arcano.
- My other laptop running ubuntu is named isengard.
- My main development virtual machine, running WinServer2k3, is named newton (after Sir Isaac Newton, of course).
Some other names I've used previously include kepler (in honor of Johannes Kepler), caladan (from Frank Herbert's dune), copernico (the Spanish spelling for Nicolaus Copernicus), radiant, arrakis (again, a dune reference), lothlorien, and colossus (a reference to the computer, not the comic superhero). There are probably plenty others I've forgotten over the years :-).
Another common choice seems to be using letters from the Greek alphabet. That was the convention at my college. I still remember our first account used to be in delta, which turned out to be an old Sun workstation hosting email, web and shell access to the CS department (and later decomissioned).
What do you name your computers?
I have always named my personal computer Elmo. It was the name of sparc terminal back in college whose optical mouse actually worked 95% of the time (This was back in 96 when the mouse pad was a mirror with a grid on it). When naming machines in the organization I’ve always tried to use names that can help pinpoint their usage. Personal machines are named after the user who uses it, while servers I typically use Environment + Purpose + Numeric. So in development I might have:
DevWeb1
DevWeb2
DevApp1
DevSQL1
DevSQL2
QA and Prod machines would have different prefixes. While this model is not perfect it makes it easy for outsiders to remeber and figure out what machine does what. In my example DevWeb1 and DevWeb2 would probally be load balanced web servers, with a single application server, and a clustered sql server.
I try to name my personal computers after monsters or demons, on the theory that they’re less likely to misbehave (it’s… a complicated superstition). My server is named grendel, and my laptop is hati or skoll, depending on whether it’s booted into Linux or Windows.
In high school, we named all the computers in a lab after gods/goddesses, and my college has named them after superheroes, star trek/futurama/etc characters, and other famous people/characters.
DPG-<type>… Currently that means DPG-MBP17, DPG-MBP15, DPG-DESK and DPG-TYTN, DPG-VIS17 for the Vista virtual.
Either that shows consistency or a lack of imagination….
[)amien