hostnamectl — Control the system hostname
hostnamectl [OPTIONS...] {COMMAND}
hostnamectl may be used to query and change the system hostname and related settings.
This tool distinguishes three different host names: the high-level "pretty" hostname which might include all kinds of special characters (e.g. "Lennart's Laptop"), the static hostname which is used to initialize the kernel hostname at boot (e.g. "lennarts-laptop"), and the transient hostname which might be assigned temporarily due to network configuration and might revert back to the static hostname if network connectivity is lost and is only temporarily written to the kernel hostname (e.g. "dhcp-47-11").
Note that the pretty hostname has little restrictions on the characters used, while the static and transient hostnames are limited to the usually accepted characters of internet domain names.
The static host name is stored in
/etc/hostname, see
hostname(5)
for more information. The pretty host name, chassis
type and icon name are stored in
/etc/machine-info, see
machine-id(5).
The following options are understood:
-h, --help¶Prints a short help text and exits.
--version¶Prints a short version string and exits.
--no-ask-password¶Don't query the user for authentication for privileged operations.
-H, --host¶Execute the operation remotely. Specify a hostname, or username and hostname separated by @, to connect to. This will use SSH to talk to a remote system.
--static, --transient, --pretty¶If set-hostname is invoked and one or more of these options are passed only the selected hostnames is updated.
The following commands are understood:
Show current system hostname and related information.
Set the system
hostname. By default this will alter
the pretty, the static, and the
transient hostname alike, however if
one or more of
--static,
--transient,
--pretty are used
only the selected hostnames are
changed. If the pretty hostname is
being set, and static or transient are
being set as well the specified host
name will be simplified in regards to
the character set used before the
latter are updated. This is done by
replacing spaces by "-" and removing
special characters. This ensures that
the pretty and the static hostname
are always closely related while still
following the validity rules of the
specific name. This simplification of
the hostname string is not done if
only the transient and/or static host
names are set, and the pretty host
name is left untouched. Pass the empty
string "" as hostname to reset the
selected hostnames to their default
(usually
"localhost").
Set the system icon name. The icon name is used by some graphical applications to visualize this host. The icon name should follow the Icon Naming Specification. Pass an empty string to this operation to reset the icon name to the default value which is determined from chassis type (see below) and possibly other parameters.
Set the chassis
type. The chassis type is used by some
graphical applications to visualize
the host or alter user
interaction. Currently, the following
chassis types are defined:
desktop,
laptop,
server,
tablet,
handset, as well as
the special chassis types
vm and
container for
virtualized systems that lack an
immediate physical chassis. Pass an
empty string to this operation to
reset the chassis type to the default
value which is determined from the
firmware and possibly other
parameters.