How to make bash update its idea of hostname

Question

My bash prompt shows my hostname. If I change my hostname with the hostname command, in /etc/hosts, /etc/hostname and $HOSTNAME, the prompt still uses the old name. Is it possible to update this without logging out?

Answer 1

If you have \h or \H in your prompt setting, its expansion is initialized when the shell starts, so you'll have to restart bash (exec bash). If that bothers you too much, change your prompt setting to print $HOSTNAME.

Answer 2

Try source ~/.bashrc