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Edit the Smoothwall Appliance hostname

Updated
This article applies only to the Smoothwall On-Premise Appliance, not to our Cloud products.

By default, the Smoothwall Appliance identifies itself on the network by its IP address, but you can change this and the hostname if needed.

Best practice to follow

When choosing a hostname, ensure it resolves through your network’s DNS or hosts file. You can choose:

  • A fully qualified domain name (FQDN), including the name of the domain that the Smoothwall Appliance is in. For example smoothwall.local or smoothwall.school.sch.uk
  • A short name, for example smoothwall.

We also recommend, that when using a hostname, you set your hostname to be the same as your domain name to avoid seeing these flags when you run Directory Diagnostics :

  Note

If you have a centrally-managed setup , you can’t resolve these messages.

  • Machine account dNSHostName matches system hostname showing an orange exclamation point icon.
  • Kerberos test showing an orange exclamation point icon.
  • Under Kerberos test, Obtain ticket for principle HTTP/hostname showing ‘Failed’ with a red cross icon.

Edit your hostname

Changing the hostname causes the Smoothwall Appliance to regenerate the User HTTPS Services Certificate used for SSL Login Pages and other user-facing HTTPS services.

  1. Go to System > Preferences > Hostname.
  2. Edit the Hostname.
  3. You can change the System identification method to change how your Smoothwall Appliance identifies itself to your network, from IP address to Hostname.
  4. Select Save changes.
  5. Select the ‘rebooted’ link in the banner to reboot your Smoothwall Appliance.
  6. Deploy the new certificate to devices using a Group Policy or the getcert page.