Change HostName

Apr 2023

To change the hostname of an Alma Linux instance, use the following procedure.
First, check the current hostname: from the console enter:

hostname
or
hostnamectl

This will give an output similar to below:

Static hostname: localhost.localdomain
Icon name: computer-server
Chassis: server
Machine ID: 87b77afdf05948d88282bb44dc1e8386
Boot ID: a7c17a79aa394c2f84758fa133c735cb
Operating System: AlmaLinux 8.5 (Arctic Sphynx)
CPE OS Name: cpe:/o:almalinux:almalinux:8::baseos
Kernel: Linux 4.18.0-348.el8.x86_64
Architecture: x86-64

In this example we can see that the hostname is the default value of localhost.localdomain and we want to change this to something that we can use and recognise.
To set the hostname use the following:

hostnamectl set-hostname 'your-hostname'

For example, lets say I want to change the hostname to be mailsvr, then I would use:

hostnamectl set-hostname mailsvr

We can now check the hostname from the console again using:

hostname
or
hostnamectl

The hostname returned will now be the one you set (mailsvr) in this example.