/etc/init.d/hostname.sh does not have a graceful fallback if the
/etc/hostname file doesn't exist. Other systems such as Ubuntu and RH
will either leave the hostname in place, if a proper hostname is
already set, otherwise it will set the hostname to 'localhost' when
the /etc/hostname files doesn't exist.
As you can see we have to add some additional handling to provide this
behavior when the system's hostname command doesn't take the '-b'
option.
