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This morning I configured my new MacBook 14", in a room full of other Apple products.

After having it set up I started putting all my applications in order, and I opened the terminal. At that point I noticed that it was reporting:

myname@iPad-of-anotherperson %

(where iPad-of-anotherperson was an actual iPad in the room).

I do not know why it reported as a hostname the name of another device. I changed HostName, ComputerName and LocalHostName via terminal, but still I was not sure if everything was ok. So, as the computer was brand new, I just entered recovery mode, erased the disk and restarted the installation of Monterey.

Now the OS is reinstalling itself, but in the Installer logs (cmd+L) I still see the name iPad-of-anotherperson. All the logs are done as follows:

ID timestamp iPad-of-anotherperson log

I don't know how to remove that name, or why it is reported as a name for the computer, as I did not connect it in any way to the iPad and now the name seems stuck with the new computer.

Do you have any suggestions?

bmike
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Eleanore
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1 Answers1

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My main suggestion is to not worry what the host name is in terminal if it stays correct in sharing preference pane. Unless you need the network to assign things by name correctly every time, whoever had that IP address before will change regularly for most networks based on DHCP lease time settings.

This is expected behavior on networks where DNS servers don’t grab the macOS host name or you don’t get a clean DNS from DHCP.

You might not have permanent good luck forcing the behavior on the Mac end with scripts, but managing the DNS / DHCP side is typically more effective a solution.

You are very much not alone in thinking this is wrong / surprising / unexpected behavior.

bmike
  • 235,889