
This tutorial outlines steps to change hostname on Debian 9 system. The hostname will be set at the time of installation of Debian operating system. If you are creating a virtual machine, it will dynamically assign when instance created.
Prerequisites
Before starting with tutorial, ensure that you are logged in as a non-root user with sudo privileges.
Change Hostname on Debian
By assigning a hostname you can identifies a system on a network. You must make sure that there shouldn’t have same hostname on a same network.
Get Current Hostname
At first, you need to check current hostname. To get the current hostname, run the below command:
hostnamectl
Static hostname: local.tecnstuff
Icon name: computer-vm
Chassis: vm
Machine ID: 287b816ad03c4f429f7bb49501983e1c
Boot ID: 7fd5cca4dd5c41f6ac53214e11fa3f57
Virtualization: oracle
Operating System: Debian GNU/Linux 9 (stretch)
Kernel: Linux 4.9.0-8-amd64
Architecture: x86-64
In above output you can see that the current hostname is local.tecnstuff
.
Changing the Hostname using hostnamectl
In Debian 9, there are multiple methods to change hostname. First one is change the hostname using hostnamectl
command. Following is the basic syntax to change hostname:
sudo hostnamectl set-hostname NEW_HOST_NAME
You can run command as below to change hostname:
sudo hostnamectl set-hostname server.tecnstuff.net
We changed the hostname from local.tecnstuff
to server.tecnstuff.net
using hostnamectl
command. Now the hostname is server.tecnstuff.net
for server, you can check it again using hostnamectl
command.
Change the Hostname by Edit /etc/hosts file
Another method to change hostname is to edit /etc/hosts
file manually. Open /etc/hosts file using your favorite text editor:
sudo nano /etc/hosts
Inside the file, change the hostname as per you choice at line that begins with 127.0.0.1
Save and close file. For this method you need to restart your system.
Verify Hostname
After changed hostname using second method, you can again check hostname using hostnamectl
command and now it should give output with new hostname as below:
Static hostname: server.tecnstuff.net
Icon name: computer-vm
Chassis: vm
Machine ID: 287b816ad03c4f429f7bb49501983e1c
Boot ID: 7fd5cca4dd5c41f6ac53214e11fa3f57
Virtualization: oracle
Operating System: Debian GNU/Linux 9 (stretch)
Kernel: Linux 4.9.0-8-amd64
Architecture: x86-64
As you can see above the hostname is successfully changed from local.tecnstuff
to server.tecnstuff.net
.
Conclusion
Finally, you learned how to change the hostname on Debian 9 system using different methods.
If you face any issues or have any suggestions you can leave a comment below.
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