Setting a permanent host name in Mac OS X

Are you tired of host names like eliza-7.local in Mac OS X? Are you tied of seeing pointless dialogs like “eliza-7.local is already in use. Switching to eliza-8.local”? Do you want a stable hostname you put in scripts, MYSQL user tables, and so forth? If so add the following line to /etc/hostconfig:

HOSTNAME=eliza.elharo.com

Of course you’ll change eliza.elharo.com to the fully qualified domain name of your machine. You’ll need to use sudo to edit the file. On versions of Mac OS X prior to Tiger (10.3 and earlier) you may need to delete the existing HOSTNAME line as well.

It’s up to you whether or not to register the name with your local DNS server, though I find it convenient to do so. One more trick: it’s completely possible to register NAT addresses like 192.168.254.23 with external DNS servers like EasyDNS. You’ll only be able to connect to that system from within your local subnet (unless you’ve configured your firewall to forward external requests to that local address), but the DNS resolution still works.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 29th, 2005 at 3:58 PM and is filed under Mac. You can follow any responses to this entry through the Atom feed. You can make a comment, Digg this story, or trackback from your own site.