Change the "device name" in the details window of System settings

Question

I would like to change my "Device name" as shown in the settings panel. How do I do this?

Solution 1

Execute the following command using a terminal:

sudo sed -i 's/present-host-name/new-host-name/' /etc/hosts
sudo sed -i 's/present-host-name/new-host-name/' /etc/hostname

You can check your present-host-name by cat /etc/hostname or hostname.

Then reboot the computer, to see the changes.

Solution 2

• Open a terminal and issue the command

  gksu gedit /etc/hosts
  

• Then change the line

  127.0.1.1   victor-System-Product-Name
  

  with

   127.0.1.1    your-desired-name
  

• Then also open the file /etc/hostname with command gksu gedit /etc/hostname and change the hostname there to reflect the new name.

• Then reboot the computer, to see the changes

Solution 3

You can use the built in service hostnamectl

sudo hostnamectl set-hostname [NEW-HOSTNAME]

replacing [NEW-HOSTNAME] with the hostname you would like this should work immediately on most things but I would reboot for good measure.

Solution 4

Since there are plenty of ways to get something done here is one more:

While in your root directory:

cd /etc
sudo vi hostname  

Type in your admin password, press Enter.

Press i to 'insert' and change existing device name to the desired device name.

Press Esc and type :wq!, press Enter.

Restart the system for the change to take affect.

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Comments

[Admin]

1st answer worked fine for me on 14.04, many thanks

[Samik]

Or sudo hostname preferredname ?

[Anwar]

@Samik, unfortunately sudo hostname preferredname won't work. I checked that. thanks

[Victor S]

Sorry, these steps don't work, but I guess it's good to change the etc/hosts file to reflect what is in etc/hostname anyway. Thanks.

[Anwar]

Only renaming the hostname change the device name in details. but There will be an error relating to hostname in each sudo command to terminal

[Anwar]

Only changing the hostname, causes error to be shown on each sudo command to the terminal

[Anwar]

@VictorS, yes, only changing the hostname causes errors to be shown in terminal

[atenz]

Thanks for noticing me about that , can you post the exact errors you see . According to Hostname man page Edit /etc/hostname for permanent change, even i tried this method and haven't encountered any such errors.

[Anwar]

I edited /etc/hostname to a new name anwar from previous one anwar-precise. The error after rebooting the system and executing a sudo command is sudo: unable to resolve host anwar. It may be only warning. I executed sudo gedit command

[vine_user]

Thats right. I rewrote the description.

[atenz]

I searched for these and concluded you need to change both hosts and hostname to reflect complete changes , depending on maybe loopback , DNS , domain-name, resolv.conf. But its better to do changes in both of them. Yet i haven't encountered any such error ,must be different interface.

[UnKNOWn]

very nice.. Changes are immediate..