Manually change the computer name

Mar 11, '02 09:16:47PM

Contributed by: Anonymous

I have been trying to find were OS X is setting the name of the computer that is shown in the login panel. I checked all of the hostconfig type files and found nothing for changing this setting. I finally discovered that Apple is using their own file to store this information, found here:

/var/db/SystemConfiguration/preferences.xml

This is the section of the file that holds the computer name:

<dict>
<key>System</key>
<dict>
<key>ComputerName</key>
<string>hobbit.usc.edu</string>
<key>ComputerNameEncoding</key>
<integer>0</integer>
</dict>
</dict>

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