Ubuntu Bionic (actually cloud-init) Reverting Hostname on Reboot

If you’ve changed the hostname on an Ubuntu Bionic install, restarted the node, then found that the hostname has reverted you may be wondering why this has happened. The problem actually stems from the cloud-init scripts and the ‘preserve_hostname’ option.

root@ipa:~# grep -H -n preserve /etc/cloud/cloud.cfg
/etc/cloud/cloud.cfg:15:preserve_hostname: false

Go change the variable to true and the next time you change the hostname and reboot it will be left intact.