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Rename a server

The label is a portal display name. The hostname lives in the guest.

1 min read

Two names, and only one of them is cosmetic.

Label

What the portal calls the server. Change it on the server's Settings tab. Letters, digits, dots and hyphens, starting with a letter or digit.

Hostname

What the guest OS calls itself, set from the image's cloud-init at first boot. Changing the label does not change it. To change the hostname on a running server, do it in the guest:

sudo hostnamectl set-hostname web-01.example.com

Then make sure it resolves locally, or sudo gets slow:

sudo sed -i 's/^127.0.1.1.*/127.0.1.1 web-01.example.com web-01/' /etc/hosts

Reverse DNS is a third, separate thing

What the rest of the internet resolves your IP address to is the PTR record, set under Networking → Reverse DNS. See Reverse DNS.

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