A computer hostname is used to label a particular computer, or device, which is connected to a network. It is concatenated with the network name to create the full name of the computer.
The hostname command can be used to elicit the host name part of the computer name.
On a Debian based system the hostname of a computer is stored in the file /etc/hostname. You may also need to edit the name configured in the file /etc/hosts.
Example of content from /etc/hosts file:
127.0.0.1 localhost 127.0.0.1 apple.vntweb.co.uk apple # The following lines are desirable for IPv6 capable hosts ::1 ip6-localhost ip6-loopback fe00::0 ip6-localnet ff00::0 ip6-mcastprefix ff02::1 ip6-allnodes ff02::2 ip6-allrouters
Once the new hostname has been configured the change can be permanently implemented by running /etc/init.d/hostname.sh start.
