[CentOS] Central hostname management?

Tue Feb 10 16:13:58 UTC 2015
Niki Kovacs <info at microlinux.fr>

Hi,

Our local school has a 100 % Slackware Linux network with two servers 
and 14 desktop clients.

The main server is running Dnsmasq, and he's providing static IP 
addresses to the desktop clients. Hostnames are also managed centrally.

All client machines only have this in /etc/hosts:

127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost

And in /etc/HOSTNAME:

localhost.localdomain

The hostname gets sent to each of the desktop clients by the server. The 
big advantage is I can manage everything centrally from the server. One 
line in /etc/dnsmasq.conf, and that's it. Client installs can all be 
cloned with Ghost4Linux.

Now I'm trying to do the same thing on CentOS 7.

/etc/hosts:

127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost (IPv6 is disabled)

/etc/hostname:

localhost

I'm experimenting with all this while reading the RHEL Networking Guide. 
I understand CentOS 7 is using hostnamectl to manage the hostname.

In that case, what do I have to do? Can hostnamectl be somewhat disabled 
and/or removed?

Cheers,

Niki
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