Error saying hosts E212 Can t open file for writing when trying to change host name on the VM

Question

I have two VMs, one is the master and the other is the worker. I'm trying to create a kubernetes cluster. When I try to edit the hosts name, I get the following error:

"hosts" E212: Can"t open file for writing ​

Answer 1

Hey @Ali, Follow these steps:

 sudo su

When asked for password give the password.

After that to edit the hosts file using any one of the below commands:

nano /etc/hosts 

or 

vi /etc/hosts

Comments

Okayyy....but why was the error occurring in the first place?

---

Hey @Vardhan, You get this error when you don't have permissions or not running as a root user. Not just anyone can change the host name of the system. Hence using the sudo su command, you start accessing resources as a root user and it solves your issue.

Answer 2

I am interested in the answer as well. I am having the same challenges on SLES12 SP3 when exditing files such as /etc/passwd, /etc/group, etc.. I provide the lsattr and the ls -l to disregard any comments on those two..

I am root.. I know, I logged in as root...

# lsattr /etc/passwd shows

---------------- /etc/passwd

# ls -l /etc/passwd
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1838 Jan 25 13:23 /etc/passwd

# lsof /etc/passwd
#                       ( <<- Nothing is returned)

Comments

Hey, You have read and write permissions as root. Open your etc/passwd file as root.

sudo vi etc/passwd

This should solve your problem.