To change the hostname in CentOS, you will first need to update the hostname line in the /etc/sysconfig/network file.
HOSTNAME=example.randomlinux.com
Once that is changed, you will want to add the IP address for the hostname to /etc/hosts.
127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost
::1 localhost6.localdomain6 localhost6
192.168.1.5 example.randomlinux.com
Then, you need to restart network for the changes to take affect.
service networking restart
or
/etc/init.d/network restart
Once that is done, you should be able to use the hostname command and it should show the new hostname that you set. On my test box I did have to restart the box for it to take affect, so if you don’t see the changes, you may need to reboot.
[[email protected] ~]# hostname
example.randomlinux.com
Chris September 20th, 2013
Posted In: How To
Tags: hostname command, localhost