In this article I will explain how you can change ubuntu host name temporarily and permanently.
Set the system’s host name
Run following command from terminal to change system’s host name. Replace HOST_NAME with a name you want to set as new host name. This will change host name temporarily and will be reverted to original host name on system reboot. In next section I will explain how to change host name permanently.
hostname HOST_NAME
Change host name permanently
To change system’s host name permanently, we need to edit hostname and hostsfiles located in /etc directory.
Change hostname file
Run following command to change hostname file.
sudo nano /etc/
Above command will open hostname containing current host name.
CURRENT_HOST_NAME
Replace CURRENT_HOST_NAME with NEW_HOST_NAME.
NEW_HOST_NAME
Save the file by pressing Ctrl + O and exit the editor by pressing Ctrl + X keys.
Change hosts file
Open the hosts file for editing.
sudo nano /etc/hosts
hosts file contains mapping of hostnames to IP addresses.
127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.1.1 CURRENT_HOST_NAME
# The following lines are desirable for IPv6 capable hosts
::1 localhost ip6-localhost ip6-loopback
ff02::1 ip6-allnodes
ff02::2 ip6-allrouters
Change the CURRENT_HOST_NAME with NEW_HOST_NAME, after making these changing the hosts file will look as following.
127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.1.1 NEW_HOST_NAME
# The following lines are desirable for IPv6 capable hosts
::1 localhost ip6-localhost ip6-loopback
ff02::1 ip6-allnodes
ff02::2 ip6-allrouters
Save the file by pressing Ctrl + O and exist the editor by pressing Ctrl + Xkeys.
Finally reboot the system to load the new configurations.
sudo reboot
Thank you for reading. Please let me know (in comments section) if you have any questions.
