How to set your machine name in Damn Small Linux?
 

When I issue the command hostname mwalimu to set the machine name for my system I can not reboot the system to accept the chages and my computer freezes. but when I edit the etc/hostname it works but when I reboot the system fails to get hostname via gethostname what dose this mean

Have you compared /etc/HOSTNAME with /etc/hosts?

Check out following
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/wiki/c..._hostname.html