mmm I have a very strange system here? there is nothing in /etc/hosts and /etc/network other than localhost.localdomain.
but I still have a hostname that won't change back to localhost.
I will just have to add it to rc.local thanks guys I just thought there was another place?
If the machine is on a network then it's likely to be doing a hostname lookup (reverse DNS, hosts file, NIS, whatever is configured) of the IP address of the first network interface and using whatever comes back as the hostname. This (reverse DNS) is how hostnames get assigned on my network.
Paul.
