My mac just started giving me a weird message when it wakes up after going to sleep. This computer's local hostname "Macintosh-8.local" is already in use on this network. The name has been changed to "xxxxxx-9.local". To change the local hostname, open System Preferences and click Sharing, then click "Edit" and type the name in the Local Hostname field. This is about the 8th time it's done this to me in the last couple weeks.
This also happened to me over the last few months when my iMac was connected to an Airport Extreme via ethernet, with wifi turned off. There are no other units on the network with the same name; eventually my iMac name incremented to (name)8756. After much research on this and other support sites (and many attempts following sugestions, including rebuild) I found that removing the ethernet connection and using wifi only fully resolved the issue. My problem is that other macs connecting to the shared disk and printer on the iMac are now slower and I cannot sleep the iMac. When connected to the AE I used "wake up on ethernet request", which I believe caused the issue due to interactions between the iMac, router and the AE bonjour service. I can connect the disk directly to the AE, but I repeatedly read that Apple do not support Time Machine on AE shared disks - even though they work better and more reliably than the shared iMac disk.
iMac now on 10.7.4; AE on 7.6.1. I do not know precisly when the issue started. The issue is totally repeatable - just connect to the AE via ethernet, turn off wifi. I suspect a bug somewhere, any help would be appreciated as I like the previous speed and do like to sleep the iMac.
Apparently this can happen if you have both Ethernet and WiFi enabled.
This is happening to me too. I have an Airport Extreme Base station WAN port connected to the cable modem via ethernet and my iMac is connected to one of the ethernet piggy back ports. Airport is turned off on the iMac. Nothing is enabled in the Systems Preferences>Sharing menu.
Thanks for your input. It seems that this must be a bug. For the record, I am on OS 10.6.8, I was hoping that the problem might be resolved when I upgrade. I think that we will have to submit this issue to Apple feedback and hope for a future fix. It doesn't seem to affect anything else it's just annoying. I think the message may be triggered when my wife uses her iPhone on our wifi network. We also watch MLB via a wifi link to our TV, that may trigger the message as well.
That's just dumb.
local host name keeps changing
