Change Hostname in Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala)

In order to change your host name you need to edit two files and then reboot the system.

In my examples below I use vi as the editor. If you are not familiar with vi you can replace it with something like gedit (for a GUI editor) or pico (for an easy to use command line editor).

1. Edit the hostname file.

This file contains a single line that includes only the hostname itself and nothing else. Replace the current hostname with the one you'd like.

sudo vi /etc/hostname

2. Now, we need edit the hosts file so that the system can find your new host name. To do that, run the following command.

sudo vi /etc/hosts

Change the hostname on the second line. See the example below.

127.0.0.1       localhost
127.0.1.1       <hostname>

3. Finally, reboot the system with the following command.

sudo shudown -r now