
On Sun, Aug 28, 2016 at 09:41:24PM -0400, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
How do you set the hostname of a Linux machine? It used to be you just put it in the file /etc/hostname.
Now, at least on CentOS, the SystemD way is to use the hostnamectl command. There are other ways (GUI and TUI) but I think hostnamectl is the real way.
This lets you set the real, pretty, and transient name of the host. I didn't know those existed. In fact, there are lots of other options.
The text space of the hostnamectld is 272K (40% larger than the text editor I use and 2.5 times the size of the hostname command).
You can even change the hostname of other machines and hostnamectl will use ssh to accomplish this. I don't see why it is hostnamectl's job to know how to ssh.
Well given systemd has a lot of container and VM support, having a command that supports controlling those thigns the same as the other systemd tools can do makes sense. It also does a lot more than just the hostname, including setting system type, some kind of deployment options (sounds like container/vm stuff again), and other things. So as a replacement for hostname, it is large and overkill, but given that's a tiny part of what it does, it isn't quite that crazy. -- Len Sorensen