Setting hostname via config is not reflected in /etc/hosts

[Avishai Ish-Shalom]

When setting the hostname using the hostname attribute (cc_set_hostname plugin), cc_update_etc_hosts will ignore the modified hostname and use the default hostname instead.

[Scott Moser (smoser)]

You are correct that setting hostname in cloud-config does not update /etc/hosts.
The value that you set in cloud-config should be correctly written to '/etc/hostname' (by cc_set_hostname).

If you also set 'manage_etc_hosts: True' then your hostname will also be written to /etc/hosts.

So, to do what you want:
#cloud-config
manage_etc_hosts: True
hostname: my-hostname-here

Do you think that is acceptable ?

I'm marking this as "Incomplete", please comment back and either move it to 'New' or 'Invalid' (or whatever state you might think is best).

[Dustin Kirkland  (kirkland)]

Marking confirmed in Ubuntu's cloud-init, and subscribing Marc Cluet, who is hitting some issues with this, when trying to run a rabbitmq-server in an Ubuntu cloud instance.

It seems that the rabbitmq-server needs to be able to resolve the system's host name.

We're trying to figure out the best way to do that. Marc had a proposed patch that added it in the rabbitmq-server's package's postinst, but that implementation was at least initially rejected.

[Scott Moser (smoser)]

I'm marking this invalid in both ubuntu and cloud-init upstream.
If cloud-config like the following does not do what you want, please re-open:
#cloud-config
manage_etc_hosts: True
hostname: my-hostname-here

[James Falcon (falcojr)]

Tracked in Github Issues as https://github.com/canonical/cloud-init/issues/2186