CentOS – Fix Hostname Reverting After Restart

centoshosthostname

On CentOS (5.x) I have a VPS that has hostname set to "olddomain.com", at least this is the domain I am getting when typing "hostname" command.

I want to change it to 'localhost.localdomain' because I think it is more generic and reliable.

localhost.localdomain already exists in these files: /etc/sysconfig/network AND /etc/hosts

NETWORKING=yes
NETWORKING_IPV6=no
HOSTNAME=localhost.localdomain
GATEWAY=95.xx.xx.xx

AND

# Do not remove the following line, or various programs
# that require network functionality will fail.
127.0.0.1               localhost.localdomain localhost
::1             localhost6.localdomain6 localhost6

So next I tried these commands:

hostname localhost.localdomain

AND 

hostname -v localhost.localdomain

"hostname" command now returns this new value. But after restart it changes back to olddomain.com or at least this is the "hostname" command returns.

Anything else to edit?

Best Answer

Add the following lines into your /etc/sysctl.conf configuration file.

kernel.hostname = hostname
kernel.domainname = domain.com

And execute the command sysctl -p /etc/sysctl.conf to read and apply the changes of your /etc/sysctl.conf configuration file.

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