perlfaq nodetype faq_monk The normal way to find your own hostname is to call the <CODE>`hostname`</CODE> program. While sometimes expedient, this has some problems, such as not knowing whether you've got the canonical name or not. It's one of those tradeoffs of convenience versus portability. The Sys::Hostname module (part of the standard perl distribution) will give you the hostname after which you can find out the IP address (assuming you have working DNS) with a <CODE>gethostbyname()</CODE> call. <PRE> use Socket; use Sys::Hostname; my $host = hostname(); my $addr = inet_ntoa(scalar(gethostbyname($name)) || 'localhost'); </PRE> Probably the simplest way to learn your DNS domain name is to grok it out of /etc/resolv.conf, at least under Unix. Of course, this assumes several things about your resolv.conf configuration, including that it exists. (We still need a good DNS domain name-learning method for non-Unix systems.)