From the collectd.conf documentation Hostname Name Sets the hostname that identifies a host. If you omit this setting, the hostname will be determinded using the gethostname(2) system call. FQDNLookup true|false If Hostname is determined automatically this setting controls whether or not the daemon should try to figure out the ``fully qualified domain name'', FQDN. This is done using a lookup of the name returned by gethostname. Using this feature (i. e. setting this option to true) is recommended. However, to preserve backwards compatibility the default is set to false. The sample config file that is installed with makeinstall includes a line which sets this option, though, so that default installations will have this setting enabled. I'll try modifying a config in my setup to omit the hostname but set the FQDNLookup to true -mark