How to change hostname on CentOS Linux

Hostname Change

There are 4 steps in a hostname change, luckily all the steps are easy.

Sysconfig/Network

Open the /etc/sysconfig/network file with your favorite text editor. Modify the HOSTNAME= value to match your FQDN host name.


# sudo nano /etc/sysconfig/network

HOSTNAME=myserver.domain.com

Hosts File

Change the host that is associated to your main IPaddress for your server, this is for internal networking (found at /etc/hosts):


Run Hostname

The 'hostname' command will let you change the hostname on the server that the commandline remembers, but it will not actively update all programs that are running under the old hostname.

Restart Networking

At this point all the necessary changes that needed to be made have been made, you will want to restart networking on your server to make sure that changes will be persistent on reboot:

# /etc/init.d/network restart




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