Your HOSTNAME not staying?

Ran into this recently. Not sure if it is a new “feature” of Mac OS X 10.5.7, or just the way my new AT&T U-verse router works.

Say you happen to do a clean install of Mac OS X (or any OS really), then connect to your wireless network, then do all the system updates, then finally get around to doing your custom settings.

One of the first things I change is the host name. I prefer themed names around something cool, vs. generic names like admins-mac-mini.local.

I fired up the System Preferences, went to the Sharing preference pane and changed the Computer Name from Admin’s Mac Mini to meimi. Did a few other things, restarted, fired up terminal and got this beautiful prompt:

admins-mac-mini:~ admin$

Hrm….

Come to find out the DHCP on my network has cached the initial name of the computer and just doesn’t want to let it go. I am sure there is some way to force it to update, but here is another way.

  1. Open up Terminal
  2. $ sudo vim /etc/hostsconfig
  3. make sure you have the following line: HOSTNAME="meimi.local" – change it to your hostname of choice and add .local to the end of it

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