Linux how to change hostname

Ubuntu Linux Change Hostname (computer name)

I am a new Ubuntu Linux laptop user. I setup my computer name to ‘tom’ during installation but now I would like to change the computer name to ‘jerry’. Can you tell me how do I remove tom and set it to jerry on Ubuntu Linux? How do I change the Ubuntu computer name from ‘ubuntu’ to ‘AvlinStar’? Can you tell me more about Ubuntu Linux change hostname command?

You can use the hostname command or hostnamectl command to see or set the system’s host name. The host name or computer name is usually at system startup in /etc/hostname file. Open the terminal application and type the following commands to set or change hostname or computer name on Ubuntu Linux.

Tutorial details
Difficulty level	Easy
Root privileges	Yes
Requirements	Ubuntu Linux
Est. reading time	2 minutes

Ubuntu change hostname command

The procedure to change the computer name on Ubuntu Linux:

1. Type the following command to edit /etc/hostname using nano or vi text editor:
   sudo nano /etc/hostname
   Delete the old name and setup new name.
2. Next Edit the /etc/hosts file:
   sudo nano /etc/hosts
   Replace any occurrence of the existing computer name with your new one.
3. Reboot the system to changes take effect:
   sudo reboot

Gif 01: Ubuntu change the computer name demo

Display the current Ubuntu hostname

Simply type the following command:
$ hostname
Sample outputs:

Fig.01: Ubuntu Linux Show the hostname/computer name command

How to change the Ubuntu server hostname without a system restart?

Type the following commands:
$ sudo hostname new-server-name-here
Next edit the /etc/hostname file and update hostname:
$ sudo nano /etc/hostname
Finally, edit the /etc/hosts file and update the lines that reads your old-host-name:
$ sudo nano /etc/hosts
From:
127.0.1.1 old-host-name
To:
127.0.1.1 new-server-name-here
Save and close the file.

• No ads and tracking
• In-depth guides for developers and sysadmins at Opensourceflare✨
• Join my Patreon to support independent content creators and start reading latest guides:
  • How to set up Redis sentinel cluster on Ubuntu or Debian Linux
  • How To Set Up SSH Keys With YubiKey as two-factor authentication (U2F/FIDO2)
  • How to set up Mariadb Galera cluster on Ubuntu or Debian Linux
  • A podman tutorial for beginners – part I (run Linux containers without Docker and in daemonless mode)
  • How to protect Linux against rogue USB devices using USBGuard

Join Patreon ➔

Ubuntu Linux Change Hostname Using hostnamectl

Systemd based Linux distro such as Ubuntu Linux 16.04 LTS and above can simply use the hostnamectl command to change hostname. To see current setting just type the following command:
$ hostnamectl
Sample outputs:

To change hostname from nixcraft to viveks-laptop, enter:
$ hostnamectl set-hostname viveks-laptop
$ hostnamectl

Conclusion

In this tutorial, you learned how to change hostname on Ubuntu Linux. For more information see this page here.

🐧 Get the latest tutorials on Linux, Open Source & DevOps via

Category	List of Unix and Linux commands
Documentation	help • mandb • man • pinfo
Disk space analyzers	df • duf • ncdu • pydf
File Management	cat • cp • less • mkdir • more • tree
Firewall	Alpine Awall • CentOS 8 • OpenSUSE • RHEL 8 • Ubuntu 16.04 • Ubuntu 18.04 • Ubuntu 20.04
Linux Desktop Apps	Skype • Spotify • VLC 3
Modern utilities	bat • exa
Network Utilities	NetHogs • dig • host • ip • nmap
OpenVPN	CentOS 7 • CentOS 8 • Debian 10 • Debian 8/9 • Ubuntu 18.04 • Ubuntu 20.04
Package Manager	apk • apt
Processes Management	bg • chroot • cron • disown • fg • glances • gtop • jobs • killall • kill • pidof • pstree • pwdx • time • vtop
Searching	ag • grep • whereis • which
Shell builtins	compgen • echo • printf
Text processing	cut • rev
User Information	groups • id • lastcomm • last • lid/libuser-lid • logname • members • users • whoami • who • w
WireGuard VPN	Alpine • CentOS 8 • Debian 10 • Firewall • Ubuntu 20.04

Comments on this entry are closed.

Last file should be /etc/hosts instead of /etc/hostname

On any system using SystemD to check current:
hostnamectl
or:
hostname
To change:
hostnamectl set-hostname viveks-desktop

Very useful. I didn’t konw about changing /etc/hosts.

How about hostnamectl command?

Dear Vivek,
The above is good and solves to Change/Modify hostname/hosts..
But the same is not holds for System Name
Ex: vivek@ubuntu is changed as vivek@vivek_desktop or anything else..
But It could not change “vivek” to newname

Hi it worked and Thank you very much for your help
I have a Doubt about AWS EC2
i created a new instance using existing instance and i want to change the hostname of new instance automatically but it showing its private ip address only for the new one
please help me

my code is
aws ec2 create-tags –resources `aws ec2 run-instances –image-id –count 1 –instance-type t2.micro –key-name –user-data file://my-userdata.sh –subnet-id –security-group-ids |jq -r “.Instances[0].InstanceId”` –tags “Key=Name,Value=servername”

It’ll hold the value to the system, i mean persist the value even after restart if you add it to /etc/sysconfig/network
HOSTNAME=

Источник

How to change your hostname in Linux

Image by Pixabay

More Linux resources

Your hostname is a vital piece of system information that you need to keep track of as a system administrator. Hostnames are the designations by which we separate systems into easily recognizable assets. This information is especially important to make a note of when working on a remotely managed system. I have experienced multiple instances of companies changing the hostnames or IPs of storage servers and then wondering why their data replication broke. There are many ways to change your hostname in Linux; however, in this article, I’ll focus on changing your name as viewed by the network (specifically in Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Fedora).

Background

A quick bit of background. Before the invention of DNS, your computer’s hostname was managed through the HOSTS file located at /etc/hosts . Anytime that a new computer was connected to your local network, all other computers on the network needed to add the new machine into the /etc/hosts file in order to communicate over the network. As this method did not scale with the transition into the world wide web era, DNS was a clear way forward. With DNS configured, your systems are smart enough to translate unique IPs into hostnames and back again, ensuring that there is little confusion in web communications.

Modern Linux systems have three different types of hostnames configured. To minimize confusion, I list them here and provide basic information on each as well as a personal best practice:

• Transient hostname: How the network views your system.
• Static hostname: Set by the kernel.
• Pretty hostname: The user-defined hostname.

It is recommended to pick a pretty hostname that is unique and not easily confused with other systems. Allow the transient and static names to be variations on the pretty, and you will be good to go in most circumstances.

Working with hostnames

Now, let’s look at how to view your current hostname. The most basic command used to see this information is hostname -f . This command displays the system’s fully qualified domain name (FQDN). To relate back to the three types of hostnames, this is your transient hostname. A better way, at least in terms of the information provided, is to use the systemd command hostnamectl to view your transient hostname and other system information:

Before moving on from the hostname command, I’ll show you how to use it to change your transient hostname. Using hostname (where x is the new hostname), you can change your network name quickly, but be careful. I once changed the hostname of a customer’s server by accident while trying to view it. That was a small but painful error that I overlooked for several hours. You can see that process below:

It is also possible to use the hostnamectl command to change your hostname. This command, in conjunction with the right flags, can be used to alter all three types of hostnames. As stated previously, for the purposes of this article, our focus is on the transient hostname. The command and its output look something like this:

The final method to look at is the sysctl command. This command allows you to change the kernel parameter for your transient name without having to reboot the system. That method looks something like this:

GNOME tip

Using GNOME, you can go to Settings -> Details to view and change the static and pretty hostnames. See below:

Wrapping up

I hope that you found this information useful as a quick and easy way to manipulate your machine’s network-visible hostname. Remember to always be careful when changing system hostnames, especially in enterprise environments, and to document changes as they are made.

Want to try out Red Hat Enterprise Linux? Download it now for free.

Источник

How to Set or Change System Hostname in Linux

Device or system hostnames are used to easily recognize a machine within a network in a human readable format. It is not much of a surprise, but on Linux system, the hostname can be easily changed by using simple command as “hostname“.

Running hostname on its own, without any parameters, will return the current hostname of your Linux system like this:

If you want to change or set hostname of your Linux system, simply run:

Of course, you will need to replace “NEW_HOSTNAME” with the actual hostname that you wish to set. This will change the hostname of your system immediately, but there is one problem – the original hostname will be restored upon next reboot.

There is another way to change the hostname of your system – permanently. You might have already figured it out that this will require change in some configuration files and you will be correct.

Set System Hostname Permanently in Linux

Newer version of different Linux distributions such as latest Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS, Fedora, RedHat, etc. comes with systemd, a system and service manager that provides a hostnamectl command to manage hostnames in Linux.

To set system hostname on SystemD based distributions, we will use hostnamectl command as shown:

For Older Linux distributions, which uses SysVinit in short init, can have their hostnames changed by simply editing the hostname file located in:

You then have to add another record for the hostname in:

You then need to run:

On RHEL/CentOS based systems that use init, the hostname is changed by modifying:

Here is a sample of that file:

To keep a permanent hostname change the value next to «HOSTNAME» to the one of your hostname.

Conclusion

This simple article meant to show you a simple Linux trick and I hope that you learned something new.

If You Appreciate What We Do Here On TecMint, You Should Consider:

TecMint is the fastest growing and most trusted community site for any kind of Linux Articles, Guides and Books on the web. Millions of people visit TecMint! to search or browse the thousands of published articles available FREELY to all.

If you like what you are reading, please consider buying us a coffee ( or 2 ) as a token of appreciation.

We are thankful for your never ending support.

Источник