I have a dual g5 running os x 10.4 and getting its IP and hostname via DHCP. The machine's name was supposed to be tarsier, and was by most accounts. For some reason though, running hostname at the command line showed the name to be jtm64791.

I started off by verifying that the computer name was set to be tarsier in every gui based config location I could think of. Sharing, NetInfo, etc. Everything looked good.

I tried: and found a few locations that had the bad name; I changed them and rebooted. The name changes stayed permenant, but hostname was still resolving jtm64791.

$sudo scutil --set HostName tarsier.domain.com

At the next reboot, the hostname was resolving to tarsier. Great! So what else can we learn from this?

According to its man page, scutil is a system config parameter manager. More specificaly "it is an interface to the 'dynamic store' data maintained by configd(8)."

A quick man configd told me that the properties were stored in a .plist file in /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration. Of course, OS X uses plist files for all sorts of configurations, so it would make sense that this would have been the place. I went ahead and edited the xml formatted .plist in vi and manually changed LocalHostName, computer name, and HostName. Sure enough, on the next reboot the name had changed.

Poking around the different .plist files in the folder uncovers all sorts of neat configurations. Of course, to make any changes you will need to sudo or su as root. I was happy enough with my newfound knowledge, and chose not to try to break the computer. Be careful making any changes you don't understand.