hi
I have just installed mandrake 10.1 and it set my host and domian name to
cpe-144.136...(some ip adress).nsw.bigpond.net.au

I find this annoying I want to change it to
mynamePC.HOME
heres what I did.

- "hostname mynamePC.HOME"
when I do hostname -f I get
hostname: unknown host

anyway I procedded to edit /etc/hosts to
127.0.0.1 mynamePC.HOME mynamePC

then edited /etc/sysconfig/network which now says
HOSTNAME=nynamePC.HOME
NETWORKING=yes

and
ehco mynamePC.HOME > /proc/sys/kernel/hostname
killall dhclient
"service network restart" or "/etc/rc.c/init.d/network restart (i tried both)

I then restarted the pc i.e shutdown -r now and it still did not change

"netconfig" is not on my system also my bigpond cable modem is connected to my eth0
(bigpond is an cable internet provider)
thanks

That name is given to you by your ISP and you usually can't change it easily.

If you want to be able to access it by another name just edit /etc/hosts and add the name you want in the same line as 127.0.0.1, separated by a space or a tab from the other entries.

hi,
I don´t understand the problem.
what´s the relation between your hostname and your "online-hostname" set by your ISP????

I was wondering that too...but I just assumed that he wants to be able to reference his computer by a more normal-looking name on his LAN or locally or whatever.

That /etc/hosts won't change your actual hostname but it will make an alias to it which may be what you need.

If you really want to change your host name you'll need to get a FQDN and get a DNS service.

/etc/hosts first line is normally for the loopback interface.

127.0.0.1 localhost lo (and so on)
192.168.x.y mypc.mynet.net mypc (you have to make up your own IP)

It goes: IP<spaces>hostname<spaces>alias1<spaces>alias2<spaces> ...
If you change the 127.0.0.1 line, some things won't work ... like printing?

Your isp would have had an entry in there too I guess - it is needed for you to receive packets from them.

After setting your own network name etc as above, the hostname= may work for you so it says "welcome to myhost.mynet.net" (or whatever) in the logon screen.

However - your isp may have got you to install a script which changes your hostname at reboot.

Not just at reboot but at DSL connect.

hi
the problem is that I dont know why my local hostname is set to an IP adress which was assigned by the ISP
I dont want an ip address as the name of my localhost, I want my name to be the name of the localhost.

I want to change my local hostname from the IP adress which was assigned i.e cpe_144-136.. to myname.HOME

to make it cleared
when I log in to my machine this is what it looks like
root@cpe-144-136-111-xxx.nsw.bigpond.net.au#
but I want it to be
root@mynamePC.HOME#

how do I do that.

All that aside, you just want to change the prompt:

In ~/.profile add
Which will give you
root@mypc.home #
as a prompt.

your adsl modem seems to be connected directly to your computer (such as a usb modem)
your isp will generally hand out a dns name though you might be able to not accept this when it is offered... 'm not sure, but i believe you could have a look in your dhcp client man page

"cpe-144-136-111-xxx" will be the name of the modem (as well as it's IP). If the modem is connected directly to the computer (via USB as suggested or otherwise) then this must be the name of the computer too. Otheriwse, how is the computer to see anything in the modem?

(Though I'm wondering if this name can be an alias name instead? But it would appear that setting up a DNS server would do the trick.)

Generally, if you plug the modem in through a ethernet nic, then you can keep your hostname whatever you want and just set DHCP.