ERROR: couldn't derive collector name from host name

Question:

The following example error message is found in the Collector logs while trying to install and register a Collector and the Collector fails to register with the Sumo Logic service? How to resolve it?

2016-07-05 19:25:59,467 [WrapperSimpleAppMain] ERROR com.sumologic.scala.collector.Collector - * ERROR: couldn't derive collector name from hostname. 

Answer:

Test the DNS on the host running the collector application using the following command(s):

ping <hostname>

nslookup <hostname>

dig @<nameserver> <hostname>

If no hostname is returned with any of these commands you may need to update your host configuration file to include the proper hostname. You can also manually supply the Collector name as part of the user.properties configuration file to work around this issue.

Note: If this issue is seen on an Amazon Web Services host it may be that the EnableDnsHostnames property in the VPC config is not set.