How to change the Hostname on CentOS 7

The easiest way to change the hostname on CentOS 7 is to use the hostnamectl command.

First I will check the current hostname by running "hostnamectl status" on the shell of my server:

hostnamectl status

The output on my system is:

[root@server1 ~]# hostnamectl status
   Static hostname: server1.example.com
         Icon name: computer-vm
           Chassis: vm
        Machine ID: d89865d34b5a4637a9a4ff0ce0f6da02
           Boot ID: 56d1685056d743b39e57a7b9cbfe467c
    Virtualization: vmware
  Operating System: CentOS Linux 7 (Core)
       CPE OS Name: cpe:/o:centos:centos:7
            Kernel: Linux 3.10.0-123.el7.x86_64
      Architecture: x86_64

Then I change the hostname with the set-hostname option of the hostnamectl command to server2.example.com

hostnamectl set-hostname server2.example.com

Afterward, I check with the command hostname and hostname -f if the hostname change has succeeded.

hostname
hostname -f

The result should be:

[root@server1 ~]# hostname
server2.example.com
[root@server1 ~]# hostname -f
server2.example.com

Instead of the hostname command you could also use the "hostnamectl status" command again to check if the new hostname has been set:

[root@server1 ~]# hostnamectl status
   Static hostname: server2.example.com
         Icon name: computer-vm
           Chassis: vm
        Machine ID: d89865d34b5a4637a9a4ff0ce0f6da02
           Boot ID: 56d1685056d743b39e57a7b9cbfe467c
    Virtualization: vmware
  Operating System: CentOS Linux 7 (Core)
       CPE OS Name: cpe:/o:centos:centos:7
            Kernel: Linux 3.10.0-123.el7.x86_64
      Architecture: x86_64