NAME
sethostname() — set name of current host system
SYNOPSIS
#include <unistd.h>
int sethostname(const char *name, size_t namelen);
DESCRIPTION
The
sethostname()
system call
sets the name of the current system to
name,
which has a length of
namelen
characters.
At system boot time
sethostname()
is normally executed by the
hostname
command (see
hostname(1))
in the
/sbin/init.d/hostname
script.
Host names are limited to
MAXHOSTNAMELEN
characters, as defined in
<sys/param.h>.
Security Restrictions
The actions associated with this system call require the
PRIV_SYSATTR
privilege
(SYSATTR).
Processes owned by the superuser have this privilege.
Processes owned by other users may have this privilege, depending on system
configuration.
See
privileges(5)
for more information about privileged access on
systems that support fine-grained privileges.
RETURN VALUE
sethostname()
returns the following values:
- 0
Successful completion.
- -1
Failure.
errno
is set to indicate the error.
ERRORS
If
sethostname()
fails,
errno
is set to one of the following values.
- EFAULT
name
points to an illegal address.
The reliable detection of this error is implementation dependent.
- EPERM
The user does not have appropriate privileges.
WARNINGS
Setting a hostname of more than 64 bytes with
sethostname()
is possible only with the appropriate configuration options enabled (see
nodehostnamesize(5)).
It is strongly recommended that all related documentation be completely
understood before setting a larger hostname.
A hostname larger than 64 bytes can cause anomalous behavior or
failure in applications which use the
hostname
command or the
gethostname()
system function to obtain the name.
AUTHOR
sethostname()
was developed by the University of California, Berkeley.
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