Any way to find the old hostname?

pedz

Registered
I have a car load of old disk drives that I'm going through and pulling off what I hope will be useful and then reformatting them and either sell them or give them away.

I have a disk (just as one example) that came from a Mac laptop and the latest date is 2007. It is the Macintosh HD disk. Is there a place that kept the hostname that I can retrieve via cat or something similar? /etc/hosts is just the default local host entries.
 
The Hostname should be usually the UserName on Mac OS! Also you go into the finder System Preference->Sharing pane, this is where others see you!
 
Also launching thermal on the external, launching Terminal.app and just type:hostname and click the Return button and it will print it out!
 
You wrote "thermal". I guess that was a typo? hostname is going to give me the host name of the laptop I'm currently using -- not the hostname of the laptop that the external drive use to belong to.
 
You wrote "thermal". I guess that was a typo? hostname is going to give me the host name of the laptop I'm currently using -- not the hostname of the laptop that the external drive use to belong to.
No you get to the machine and open Terminal from that external! it ill tell you the hostname right away if you run it from the drive!
 
No -- even if you run a terminal app that is stored on another drive, it will simply show you the hostname for the system that you are booted from.
You would have to be able to boot to that old drive, if possible.

Did you actually change your hostname/network name to customize each Mac system that you have owned or used? ( I do... )
I should note that I don't leave the defaults for that, so even if I could discover the hostname that I used on a 15 year old Mac (that is gone for 15 years) it won't help in determining what Mac I removed that drive from originally. It would just be a name of something, maybe a star, whatever I was thinking when I first set up that system.
I suppose the hostname is stored somewhere in the system settings, but I don't have any idea how to search that out -- but, I would likely have a Mac here that I could boot from that external, so could find out "by booting to that external drive". Not everybody keeps old Macs around like I do
 
No -- even if you run a terminal app that is stored on another drive, it will simply show you the hostname for the system that you are booted from.
You would have to be able to boot to that old drive, if possible.

Did you actually change your hostname/network name to customize each Mac system that you have owned or used? ( I do... )
I should note that I don't leave the defaults for that, so even if I could discover the hostname that I used on a 15 year old Mac (that is gone for 15 years) it won't help in determining what Mac I removed that drive from originally. It would just be a name of something, maybe a star, whatever I was thinking when I first set up that system.
I suppose the hostname is stored somewhere in the system settings, but I don't have any idea how to search that out -- but, I would likely have a Mac here that I could boot from that external, so could find out "by booting to that external drive". Not everybody keeps old Macs around like I do
Thank you for the reply.

As far as hostnames, I come up with a new name for each device: watch, iPads, Macs, etc. I use to name everything after strippers like Misty, Rosie, Lola. Right now, I'm on "spiritual" names like Hope and Peace. There are a few special ones like my green iPhone was, of course, Vina after the green seductress in The Cage. Tess, my Apple Watch 4 after Dick Tracy's girl friend since the watch is obviously straight out of Dick Tracy comic books. And Mystique for my blue iPhone cause she has huge hands.
 
I like your style...:cool:
Its way better than "User's iMac", or similar defaults, eh? I see those exact computer names sometimes. (I do part-time Mac service)
 
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