Adding or editing an entry in /etc/hosts

[Scott Kitterman]

On Friday 05 January 2007 21:45, Brian Lunergan wrote:
> Evening all:
>
> New to using ubuntu having just plunked it into place on my machine today
> as one side of a dual-boot setup, and I'm getting an error on startup
> saying it can't find the hostname I set during the install. When I try to
> do something with the sudo command I get the error spit back:
>
> unable to lookup ubuntu via gethostbyname()
>
> I take it I have to modify /etc/hosts. I can view it using the text editor
> on the desktop but of course it is read only.
>
> It contains one line that reads:
>
> 127.0.0.1 localhost
>
> I'm guessing it should read:
>
> 127.0.0.1 localhost ubuntu
>
> I have no problem working from a command line. (God Lord. My OS experience
> on the other side of the fence goes back to DOS 3 in MS and PC variants.)
> I've figured out how to log on as root and use the command line to change
> to /etc, but from there I'm lost as to what commands to use. Tried a google
> hunt but nothing useful seemed to turn up.
>
> Any tips, advice, or help in general to solve and get past this would be
> much appreciated.

Some of the discussion here might be useful:

https://launchpad.net/bugs/8980

Scott K