Trouble changing hostname on a Rightscale provisioned CentOS instance

Question

I am trying to change the hostname to host01 on an instance that was is using the RightImage_CentOS_5.4_x64_v5.6 - 11H2.a1 [rev 11] MCI.

So I set the /etc/hosts file to:

127.0.0.1 localhost localhost.localdomain  
10.76.249.192 host01  

and set the /etc/sysconfig/network file:

HOSTNAME=host01

and rebooted.

After the reboot, everything looks good. The hostname is changed:

$ /bin/hostname
host01

However, a new file appeared in the system /etc/hostname with, the following content:

ip-10-76-249-192

The /etc/hosts host file looks like this:

127.0.0.1 localhost localhost.localdomain  
10.76.249.192 host01  
10.76.249.192 ip-10-76-249-192.ec2.internal ip-10-76-249-192  

After reboot, if I drop into an other user, the hostname will change back:

$ hostname
ip-10-76-249-192  

Does anybody has any idea why this is happening and how stop this?

Answer 1

Rightscale's FAQ recommends you use an rc script to change the hostname using the hostname command.

http://support.rightscale.com/06-FAQs/FAQ_0073_-_How_can_I_change_the_EC2_hostname%3F