UNABLE TO RESOLVE HOST HOSTNAME” in UBUNTU

Today’s blog is about a simple issue you sometimes encounter after you rename your machine’s hostname. 

Issue: 

whoareyou@xenial:~$ sudo cat /etc/hostnameUnable to resolve hostname xenialPlease enter your password:

This issue occurred to me just recently when I renamed my machine name from whoareyou to xenail.

Everytime I encountered this “Unable to resolve hostname xenial” issue

Earlier while I checked my hostname with command sudo cat /etc/hostname the result was xenial.

whoareyou@xenial:~$ sudo cat /etc/hostnamexenial

But the hostname was not listed inside /etc/hosts. I checked with command sudo cat /etc/hosts

whoareyou@xenial:~$ sudo cat /etc/hosts

127.0.0.1 localhost

127.0.1.1 whoareyou

The exact reason for why the host xenial wasn’t listed in hosts is yet unknown. But in order to resolve the issue, I did this simple tweak.

I renamed the hostname xenial from /etc/hostname to whoareyou.  and restarted the machine. Then after the issue was no more encountered. As simple as it is.