Think what happens when we change the hostname.
At the first boot, the Puppy accesses to the DHCP server with the hostname, say 'pupppypcxxx'.
Only the DHCP server in the LAN exept the Puppy itself knows the nane 'pupppypcxxx' at this point of time.
Let's change the hostnane to 'somehost'. No one in the LAN exept the Puppy itself knows the name 'somehost'.
And then, what is the problem? ... Nothing... in usual case.
But gcmartin has ever encountered a problem. It may occur if the DHCP server reports the hostname 'pupppypcxxx' to other LAN system.
I guess it is a special case because most of the router in the market do not offer local DNS. They manage the LAN with only the IP's, and the MAC address in some case. Never use the hostnames.
How about with the Windows?
There is a test report from rcrsn51 regarding how the Windows are managing. I made another test to see how we Puppy should manage, with the Lupu-528 RAM mode.
- First boot, the LAN is connected with hostname 'puppypc'.
Run pnethood, it sees an another PC, Windows 7, in my LAN. - Changed the hostname to 'somehost', but did not restart X.
Run pnethood, it still sees the Windows 7 PC. - Restart X. Run pnethood, it still sees the Windows 7 PC.
The problem will occur if the Puppy is running samba before. The samba reports its netbios name to the LAN.
You need to restart the samba (need not re-connect, need not restart PC nor X) if you change the hostname when the samba is already running.