Renaming a system

[skiflyer]

I just got a brand new machine, and it will, once configured, be a drop in replacement for an existing intranet webserver.

What I'm hoping to do is to set it up with some bogus name, and then rename it when the time is right.

What worries me is that I'll be setting up
a) The OS
b) Apache
c) MySQL

And I'm afraid the machine name will get bound to those and in some way or another be a pain in my but.

Are my fears founded, or unfounded?

If unfounded... how do I go about renaming a linux machine?

Distro.. debian sarge.

 

[ericbrunson]

What I with my server farm is dedicate an ip address to each service, then enter that address in dns with a descriptive name like, "

http://www",

"ns1", "db", etc. Then I plumb each IP address on the interface of the appropriate machine. If at some time I need to move the service, the ip address moves with it and the move is instantaneous without having to wait for DNS caches to expire.

As far as the name getting embedded in the configs for the different services, you don't say what distro you're running, but in redhad/fedora the name of the machine (as far as the os is concerned) is only in one file: /etc/sysconfig/network. Apache only requires the machine name in the config if it can't determine the canonical name from the hostname. MySQL doesn't give a rat's ass what the name of the machine is.

 

[skiflyer]

Sure I do... it's Debian Sarge.

Thanks for the information.