linux: setting your machine's hostname properly

To setup the hostname manually on a Fedora or RedHat box, you need to edit two files:

• /etc/sysconfig/network
• /etc/hosts
  

1.  In the /etc/sysconfig/network file, modify the hostname:

NETWORKING=yes
HOSTNAME=fedora.hacking.com
GATEWAY=10.7.0.1

  2.  In the /etc/hosts file, modify the hostname:

# Do not remove the following line, or various programs
# that require network functionality will fail.
127.0.0.1 fedora.hacking.com fedora localhost.localdomain localhost

After making these changes to these files, the changes to the hostname should be permanent ( i.e. it will persist even across reboots). Otherwise, simply setting the hostname with the "hostname" command only affects the current session, and you lose the hostname change after the next machine reboot.