How to change the Hostname on CentOS 7 / RHEL 7

One of basics things you should  be able to do after installing a Centos 7 or RHEL 7 is to know to change your hosname of your server. In this quick tutorial i’m gonna explain how to change the hostname on your CentOS 7 / RHEL 7 Linux server using four methods .

1. nmtui Tool ( Network Configuration Using a Text User Interface)
2. nmcli Tool ( NetworkManager Command Line )
3. hostnamectl Tool
4. Editing /etc/hostname

Before starting let’s check current hostname of our Centos 7 / RHEL 7 server :

[root@server ~]# hostname
server

1./ nmtui tool:

The nmtui Tool ( Network Configuration Using a Text User Interface) is used to set a static host name in /etc/hostname .

Set the hostname and click ok.

Here we need to restart the hostnamed to apply the hostname changing.

[root@server ~]# systemctl restart systemd-hostnamed

2./ nmcli tool:

Let’s check the current hostname

[root@server ~]# nmcli general hostname
server

Now change the host name.

[root@server ~]# nmcli general hostname client.yallalabs.com

Restart the hostnamed to make sure the change takes effect.

[root@server ~]# systemctl restart systemd-hostnamed

3./ hostnamectl tool:

When we use hostnamectl tool to change the host name of our server, it’s not required to restart the hostnamed or to reboot the server to ensure the change takes an effect.

Let’s check the current host name.

[root@server ~]# hostnamectl status
Static hostname: server
Icon name: computer-vm
Chassis: vm
Machine ID: 63e2c28ecd6348a3a956f74fc02f6d84
Boot ID: 840a0e1bc90b4ac3974bb5b5cc0b20cc
Virtualization: kvm
Operating System: CentOS Linux 7 (Core)
CPE OS Name: cpe:/o:centos:centos:7
Kernel: Linux 3.10.0-327.el7.x86_64
Architecture: x86-64

Let’s change it.

[root@server ~]# hostnamectl set-hostname client.yallalabs.com

Let’s check if changes takes effects.

[root@server ~]# hostnamectl status
Static hostname: client.yallalabs.com
Icon name: computer-vm
Chassis: vm
Machine ID: 63e2c28ecd6348a3a956f74fc02f6d84
Boot ID: 840a0e1bc90b4ac3974bb5b5cc0b20cc
Virtualization: kvm
Operating System: CentOS Linux 7 (Core)
CPE OS Name: cpe:/o:centos:centos:7
Kernel: Linux 3.10.0-327.el7.x86_64
Architecture: x86-64

4./ Edit /etc/hostname:

[root@server ~]# vi /etc/hostname

Here like i mentioned before we need to restart hostnamed.

[root@server ~]# systemctl restart systemd-hostnamed

That’s it for now.

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