How to Change Hostname on Debian 10

Displaying the Current Hostname

To find out your current system name by running the following command.

hostnamectl

Output:

root@vps:~# hostnamectl
   Static hostname: vps.server.com
         Icon name: computer-vm
           Chassis: vm
        Machine ID: 0f36b9c3337c53d482fa026f60c21da5
           Boot ID: 8d91624669e94c509e5808af0d4da242
    Virtualization: kvm
  Operating System: Debian GNU/Linux 10 (buster)
            Kernel: Linux 4.19.0-13-amd64
      Architecture: x86-64

Changing the System Hostname

Now that you know the current hostname, you can change the hostname by using the following command and Optionally you can also set the pretty hostname as follows.

hostnamectl set-hostname crowncloud.net

hostnamectl set-hostname "crowncloud production server" --pretty

And also /etc/hosts file should be edited to successfully change Debian server name.

vi /etc/hosts

Output:

127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.0.1 crowncloud.net

# The following lines are desirable for IPv6 capable hosts
::1     localhost ip6-localhost ip6-loopback
ff02::1 ip6-allnodes
ff02::2 ip6-allrouters

Then replace the old name with the new, then save the file and exit.

Ubuntu servers might need to install cloud-init. If it is installed you will also need to edit the cloud.cfg file.

apt install cloud-init

Once the cloud-init is installed need to find "preserve_hostname: false" line in the follwoing configuration file "/etc/cloud/cloud.cfg" and change it to true.

vi /etc/cloud/cloud.cfg

preserve_hostname: true

Save the file and exit,

Verify the change

To verify the hostname has been fully changed, enter the "hostnamectl" command:

hostnamectl

Output:

root@vps:~# hostnamectl
   Static hostname: crowncloud.net
   Pretty hostname: crowncloud production server
         Icon name: computer-vm
           Chassis: vm
        Machine ID: 0f36b9c3337c53d482fa026f60c21da5
           Boot ID: 8d91624669e94c509e5808af0d4da242
    Virtualization: kvm
  Operating System: Debian GNU/Linux 10 (buster)
            Kernel: Linux 4.19.0-13-amd64
      Architecture: x86-64