Python Code Snippet to get the hostname and IP address of a machine

The following python code snippet will return the IP address of a machine

import socket

ip_address = socket.gethostbyname(socket.gethostname())

print ip_address

host_name = socket.getfqdn()

print host_name

The IP address may not be proper in all the cases. If the /etc/hosts file of the unix machine contains entries with hostname mapped to 127.0.0.1, will return 127.0.0.1 as IP address. So for ensuring proper working, it will be better to use the fully qualified hostname method.