Macs randomly being renamed with a () after the hostname

[RyanK]

We seem to have Macs already enrolled being added again into Jamf somehow, but since the entry is already there it overwrites the original hostname and adds a () at the end.

These Macs are not being enrolled a second time, this appears to be random duplicate entries.

A fellow jamf/mac admin I work with had this happen to his mac today and he had done nothing out of the ordinary to it, so we searched and found several entries shown below.

I did a search for (1) - (10) and found multiple for each.

XXXXXXXXXXC32P (10)

XXXXXXXXXXXJT4 (2)

XXXXXXXX647 (2)

XXXXXXXXYWP (2)

XXXXXXXXXX9VH (2)

XXXXXXXXXNL9 (2)

XXXXXXXXGH5 (2)

XXXXXXXW9QG (2)

[Shyamsundar]

if the Devices in JAMF already have the same hostname, then to differentiate it will add the number like this in front. 

Check how you name the device, and try to use a unique value, 

you should have two devices with same hostname, hence its added (2) to differentiate 

[RyanK]

We show only one device with the hostname, it is overwriting the original hostname and adding the () number after it. The why it's deciding to do that randomly is the stumper on our end. :)

Our hostnames are ML (for Mac Laptop) and then last 8 digits of the serial number, so there will be only one. 

[asoderman]

We get this at my organization. My theory is joining multiple different SSIDs while on-prem is causing a weird JAMF vs AD & DHCP battle.

[mikeh]

I've been seeing this for a while, and @asoderman's theory is a good one. I've always thought it was a pure DHCP issue. I've brought it up with our networking group but they aren't convinced it's a networking issue.

[mani2care · Accepted solution]

Its because of the NetBIOSName you may add this end of the script to change the NetBIOSName so it will not happen any more.

defaults write /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.smb.server.plist NetBIOSName "$newcomputerName" > /dev/null 2>&1

[RyanK]

Thank you very much and thank you to everyone who replied.

We will test this out and I will mark as solution after we confirm the results.