Hello,

I love my ubuntu 8.10 linode that I use as a zimbra mail server. However it has one annoying problem. It keeps renaming itself from hostname 'mail' to hostname 'li289-212' even if I am not logged in. How do I get it to stop behaving this way?

Thanks!

Have you set the hostname in /etc/hostname ? (see http://library.linode.com/getting-start ... ntu-debian) Also 8.10's support ended a long time ago, you should upgraded to a LTS release (i.e. 12.04) asap.

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yup!

[root@li289-212:~] #cat /etc/hosts
127.0.0.1 localhost
xx.xx.xx.xx mail.mylinode.com mail

Yeah yeah yeah. When I get a moment to breath it'll be the first thing I do! No seriously, I'd like to. Finding the time is the problem.

And actually I was mistaken. I'm on 10.0.4.

[root@li289-212:~] #cat /etc/lsb-release 
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=10.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=lucid
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 10.04.4 LTS"

I honestly don't muck with this host very often. For the most part it just WORKS!

My guess: You're configured to use DHCP and the dhcp daemon is changing the name when it renews the IP address.

Either configure your dhcp client to not reset the hostname (RTFM) or else switch to static IP.

_________________
Rgds
Stephen
(Linux user since kernel version 0.11)

Ok I'll check it out. Btw, I upgraded to 12.0.4 LTS. It was very surprisingly NOT HARD!!

[root@localhost:~] #cat /etc/lsb-release 
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=12.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=precise
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS"

I'll probably check out the dhcp angle tomorrow tho. Too tired and have to head to bed. Thanks for the tip tho!

So what's in your /etc/hostname file, then? (He didn't ask about /etc/hosts - that's a completely different file.)