Normally we will set the hostname of a system during the installation process. Many people don’t care about this, and don’t change the hostname even if for example this was set to some random name by the datacenter that installed the system (most likely they will set this to “debian” on any debian installation, etc). For me, it is important to see on each one of the ssh screens I will have open at any time a different hostname that is relevant and will give me quickly the information on what system I am logged in.
On any Linux system, you can change its hostname with command hostname (duh). It’s easy as :
hostname NEWNAME
The problem is that it will be resetted at next reboot by some configuration file. To make the change permanent on a Red Hat / CentOS system, simply edit the /etc/sysconfig/network file :
/etc/sysconfig/network NETWORKING=yes HOSTNAME=”plain.domainname.com” GATEWAY=”192.168.0.1″GATEWAYDEV=”eth0″ FORWARD_IPV4=”yes”
You can also use sysctl to change the variable kernel.hostname :
sysctl kernel.hostname=NEWHOSTNAME
On a Debian based system, edit the file /etc/hostname and change the name of the system. When done, run :
/etc/init.d/hostname.sh
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