To change the hostname in RHEL and other versions of Linux you need to make changes in a couple of files.
- Change the HOSTNAME line in /etc/sysconfig/network
NETWORKING=yes
HOSTNAME="mybox.mydomain.com"
- Change the hostname (FQDN and alias) in /etc/hosts
If your IP address is assigned to you by a DHCP server, then:
127.0.0.1 mybox.mydomain.com localhost.localdomain localhost mybox
If you have a static IP address, then:
127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost
192.168.0.10 mybox.mydomain.com mybox
- Run /bin/hostname <new_hostname> for the hostname change to take effect immediately.
- Run /sbin/service syslog restart for syslog to log using the new hostname.
- To update the local DNS server, that supports dynamic registration of hostname record, with your host name and DHCP IP address add the following line to the correct ifcfg file in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts, such as ifcfg-eth0 or ifcfg-eth1:
DHCP_HOSTNAME="mybox.mydomain.com"
- Updated information the PTR record in ddns:
Kill the dhclient process ("killall dhclient") - make sure it is gone
Then restart networking - "service network restart"
A reboot is not required to change the system hostname.
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Tags: RHEL, General Administration
Published Date: 20080730
