How to remove the need to put .local on the end of domain names

Question

I'm just wondering what setting to change to remove the need to put .local when SSH-ing to a computer on my home network. I'm running Mac OS X 10.6 and am sitting behind an airport base station extreme and am sharing a local IP.

example:

$SSH domain.local

this works just fine I want to be able to just

$SSH domain

Answer 1

Adding a search domain under the advanced network settings should provide what you are looking for. Details are at http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.5/en/14127.html

For Linux/Unix hosts, this is achieved by a search path in /etc/resolv.conf. The domain is by default in the search path, although additional items can be added with a line such as:

search localhost

Further details: http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/howto-set-dns-search-list-for-host-name-lookup/