Comment 5 for bug 1382190

I agree: this is a clear-cut case for the request-an-address API, but we still lack a request-a-hostname API.

Out of curiosity, how did the existing setup(s) obtain these generated hostnames in the first place? To my knowledge they were neither exposed nor documented. MAAS never had much control over which non-node client got which address from DHCP, and that's why we had to re-work DHCP management. These old generated hostnames were no more stable than the IP addresses were: if the container moved to a different IP address, it would also move to a different hostname.

So if at all possible, I would address the problem in two discrete steps:

1. Use the container's IP address, not its hostname. It should be about as stable as the hostname was.

2. Request a static IP through the MAAs API, and configure it statically on the container.