On Wed, 2011-09-21 at 23:51 -0600, linux guy wrote: > It appears to me that the only way to truly change the hostname of a > machine is to edit /etc/sysconfig/network. But I might be wrong. Not the only way. As others will say, you can set it in a file. Or, the computer can work it out for itself, when it brings the network interface up. When assigned an IP, or bringing up an interface using an IP that you've preconfigured it with, it does a name lookup to find the name associated with that IP. This lookup can be answered by your hosts file, or a DNS server. e.g. Up comes eth0. eth0 is 192.168.1.2 (by whatever method that address is assigned) get the named address for that IP. finds out it's mailserver.example.com works out that its hostname is mailserver, and its domain name is example.com So, the hosts file (or DNS server) doesn't so much "set" the hostname, but answers the "Who am I?" question. (Almost the same thing, but not quite, to be pedantic.) -- [tim@localhost ~]$ uname -r 2.6.27.25-78.2.56.fc9.i686 Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored. I read messages from the public lists. -- users mailing list users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines