Tom Allison wrote: > >have you tried to edit /etc/hostname file? > > OK, I got it, but why would the command hostname not address this? > It's kind of... inconsistent. The 'hostname' command is used by the startup scripts to set the hostname. But by itself it does not know if it is running on Debian or SuSE or Gentoo. It does not know where this information would be stored at boot time. Everyone does it differently. It does not know to edit a file. In fact it is told by the start up scripts with the information from that file. Basically you are thinking backwards. You are thinking that you should run hostname to permanently change the system name. But to permanently change the system name on Debian you should edit /etc/hostname and then reboot. Don't forget /etc/mailname too. I won't even suggest running /etc/init.d/hostname.sh without rebooting in this case. There is too much baggage to recommend restarting everything that needs it. All of the mail daemons. Possibly networking. Possibly many things. Simpler to reboot after changing something fundamental like the kernel or the hostname. Because it is so complicated to get right and so different between distros there is no single command to run to change the hostname. There might be, there could be, but there isn't. It is too easy to edit /etc/hostname. Bob
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