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 hostnames: 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 is a default received from network configuration. If a static hostname is set, and is valid (something other than localhost), then the transient hostname is not used.
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 hostname is stored in
/etc/hostname, see
hostname(5)
for more information. The pretty hostname, chassis
type, and icon name are stored in
/etc/machine-info, see
machine-info(5).
Use systemd-firstboot(1) to initialize the system host name for mounted (but not booted) system images.
The following options are understood:
--no-ask-password¶Do not query the user for authentication for privileged operations.
--static, --transient, --pretty¶If status is used (or no explicit command is given) and one of those fields is given, hostnamectl will print out just this selected hostname.
If used with set-hostname, only the selected hostname(s) will be updated. When more than one of those options is used, all the specified hostnames will be updated.
-H, --host=¶Execute the operation remotely. Specify a hostname, or a
username and hostname separated by "@", to
connect to. The hostname may optionally be suffixed by a
container name, separated by ":", which
connects directly to a specific container on the specified
host. This will use SSH to talk to the remote machine manager
instance. Container names may be enumerated with
machinectl -H
HOST.
-M, --machine=¶Execute operation on a local container. Specify a container name to connect to.
-h, --help¶--version¶The following commands are understood:
Show current system hostname and related information.
NAME¶Set the system
hostname to
NAME. 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
hostname will be simplified in regards
to the character set used before the
latter are updated. This is done by
replacing spaces with
"-" 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 the hostname to
reset the selected hostnames to their
default (usually
"localhost").
NAME¶Set the system icon
name to
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 reset the icon name to the default value, which is determined from chassis type (see below) and possibly other parameters.
TYPE¶Set the chassis type
to 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",
"watch",
"embedded" as well as
the special chassis types
"vm" and
"container" for
virtualized systems that lack an
immediate physical chassis.
Pass an empty string to reset the chassis type to the default value which is determined from the firmware and possibly other parameters.
ENVIRONMENT¶Set the deployment
environment
description. ENVIRONMENT
must be a single word without any
control characters. One of the
following is suggested:
"development",
"integration",
"staging",
"production".
Pass an empty string to reset to the default empty value.
LOCATION¶Set the location
string for the system, if it is
known. LOCATION
should be a human-friendly, free-form
string describing the physical
location of the system, if it is known
and applicable. This may be as generic
as "Berlin, Germany"
or as specific as "Left Rack,
2nd Shelf".
Pass an empty string to reset to the default empty value.