Changing host name

[Rick Stevens]

On 04/06/2010 05:52 PM, Ed Greshko wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, 2010-04-06 at 23:47 +0800, Ed Greshko wrote:
>>
>>> I believe Patrick may have missed the part about your using
>>> "system-control-network"...if that is of any value.
>> Not really, given that he didn't say he was using s-c-n but something
>> called the "network control applet" in Gnome. Since I don't use Gnome,
>> I've no idea what that means, if anything. My reply simply pointed out
>> that localhost is widely assumed to be defined, and that having it
>> undefined is likely to lead to breakage. Said breakage may or may not
>> affect the network connectivity directly, but you can be sure that
>> something somewhere will not work as expected, i.e. it's a bad idea.
>>
>>
> I don't use Gnome either.  And, AFAIK, there really is no such thing as
> a "Network Control Applet".  I did fire up Gnome and found there is a
> "Network Control" item in the Gnome menus so I assumed that is what he
> was using.
>
> Bottom line, I was nearly 100% sure he was using a GUI to do the bidding
> and "hoped" that any GUI wouldn't be so foolish as to muck with the
> "localhost" settings in the hosts file.
>
> He also showed, via ipconfig, that his adapter no longer had an IP
> address associated with it.  That, to me, demonstrates a "dead" network.
>   However, I was unable to reproduce the issue.

I suspect he's relying on NetworkManager.  In that case, if you go in
and do a "hostname whatever" behind NM's back, it's going to break.
It will invalidate the DHCP lease (bringing the network down) and
confuse NM's database (such as it is).  NM is rather, uhm, touchy
(cranky) about things being done without its knowledge.

The best bet is to edit /etc/sysconfig/network, set the desired hostname
in there, reboot the system and log back in.  NM should pick up a
DHCP lease and such with the desired hostname taken care of.

Note that I don't necessarily like NM.  It is useful, but it is
rather incompletely documented and much of what various people know
about it is rather anecdotal and may or may not be accurate, depending
on which version of NM they're running.  God help us!

NM people: I'm still willing to write the docs for this beast.  All it
takes is you to tell me to and give me some contact info so I can
clarify things when needed.  I'll overlook the deafening silence I was
greeted with in my past offers.
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- Rick Stevens, Systems Engineer, C2 Hosting          ricks at nerd.com -
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-          When all else fails, try reading the instructions.        -
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