Editing Solaris 10 System Administration Part I (section)

=== Changing System Host Name ===

* host name is contained in four files on system
* all must be modified & system rebooted to successfully change system's host name
* four files:
** /etc/nodename
** /etc/hostname.xxn
** /etc/inet/hosts
** /var/crash if crash dump is enabled on system

use uname -S command to temporarily change host name


==== edit /etc/nodename file ====

Each Solaris OS has a canonical name, which is the official name used when referring to a system. the system name is the same as host name associated with IP address of the primary network interface, for example, hostname.bge0

change canonical name by editing the /etc/nodename file & reboot system

if interface is managed by DHCP or remote procedure call (RPC) bootparams protocols, the /etc/nodename file is not used

My example using DHCP /etc/nodename file doesn't exist:
<pre># more /etc/nodename
/etc/nodename: No such file or directory
#</pre>

==== /etc/hostname.xxn file ====

==== /etc/inet/hosts ====

* host names are text strings up to 24 characters
* alphabetic characters, numbers, hyphen, period are allowed in host name
* periods are allowed only to delimit components of domain style names
* first character must be alphabetic character
* last character cannot be hyphen or period
* not case sensitive (unless NIS naming service is used, uppercase characters in names have been known to cause problems with NIS)
* A hash (#) indicates the beginning of a command