I tested this with Puppy and an XP machine.gcmartin wrote:Even though the Microsoft message indicates this (same message from the Win95 days), you have not had to reboot MS PCs for over a decade when the change is made.
1. From Puppy, I used both nmblookup and nbtscan to find the XP machine. It replied with its name.
2. I then changed the name of the XP machine, but did NOT reboot., in spite of two messages to do so.
3. I checked again from Puppy. XP continued to show its old name.
4. I rebooted the XP machine.
5. I checked again from Puppy. The new XP name immediately appeared.
I don't have an Ubuntu machine running a server to test this, but the documentation is unanimous on how to change the hostname.And, I know of NO LINUX/UNIX distro I have ever used which demands a reboot on a hostname change.
1. Manually update /etc/hostname.
2. Manually update /etc/hosts.
3. Either reboot the machine or manually run a script.