This is happening because eth0 (your primary NIC) is receiving information via DHCP, and reseting the hostname. If it's not too much trouble, probably the easiest fix is to reverse your cables so that what was eth1 is now eth0 and vice versa. If that's not a good solution, here's two things to try.

The first one is a curiosity point on my part. Edit your /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 and add/edit a line:

HOSTNAME='host.domain.ext'

.. substituting your fully qualified hostname above. Reset your hostname manually (using hostname or any of the other methods). You may have to log out and back in to see the hostname change. Bring the interface down via ifdown and then back up via ifup.

If that doesn't work, I'm pretty sure this will. Edit the file /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/network-functions. Find the function set_hostname() (it's on line 109 with Red Hat 7.3's config). Notice line 1 inside the function:

hostname $1

Try commenting that line out. Then, as like above, reset your hostname manually, logout and back in if necessary, then bring the interface down and back up. The reason this works (if it does) is that network-functions is included from the ifup-post script, called from ifup on success.

Good Luck and let me know if the first method worked unless you just swapped your eth0 and eth1.

EDIT: You may still have to override Apache and other programs. If I'm not mistaken, they do a reverse DNS lookup to determine your true hostname and use that.

[edited by - SilentReaper on January 22, 2003 12:26:59 PM]

Shucks... I was really thinking it would work. I guess another thing you could try is overriding the hostname in /etc/rc.d/rc.local. Just add the command to the end of the file?