machine-info — Local machine information file
/etc/machine-info
The /etc/machine-info file
contains machine metadata.
The basic file format of
machine-info is a
newline-separated list of environment-like
shell-compatible variable assignments. It is possible
to source the configuration from shell scripts,
however, beyond mere variable assignments no shell
features are supported, allowing applications to read
the file without implementing a shell compatible
execution engine.
/etc/machine-info contains
metadata about the machine that is set by the user or
administrator.
Depending on the operating system other configuration files might be checked for machine information as well, however only as fallback.
You may use hostnamectl(1) to change the settings of this file from the command line.
The following machine metadata parameters may
be set using
/etc/machine-info:
PRETTY_HOSTNAME=¶A pretty
human-readable UTF-8 machine identifier
string. This should contain a name
like "Lennart's
Laptop" which is useful to
present to the user and does not
suffer by the syntax limitations of
internet domain names. If possible, the
internet hostname as configured in
/etc/hostname
should be kept similar to this
one. Example: if this value is
"Lennart's Computer"
an Internet hostname of
"lennarts-computer"
might be a good choice. If this
parameter is not set, an application
should fall back to the Internet host
name for presentation
purposes.
ICON_NAME=¶An icon identifying
this machine according to the XDG
Icon Naming Specification. If
this parameter is not set, an
application should fall back to
"computer" or a
similar icon name.
CHASSIS=¶The chassis
type. Currently, the following chassis
types are defined:
"desktop",
"laptop",
"server",
"tablet",
"handset",
"watch", as well as
the special chassis types
"vm" and
"container" for
virtualized systems that lack an
immediate physical chassis. Note that
many systems allow detection of the
chassis type automatically (based on
firmware information or
suchlike). This setting (if set) shall
take precedence over automatically
detected information and is useful to
override misdetected configuration or
to manually configure the chassis type
where automatic detection is not
available.
DEPLOYMENT=¶Describes the system
deployment environment. One of the
following is suggested:
"development",
"integration",
"staging",
"production".
LOCATION=¶Describes the system
location if applicable and
known. Takes a human-friendly,
free-form string. This may be as
generic as "Berlin,
Germany" or as specific as
"Left Rack, 2nd
Shelf".
PRETTY_HOSTNAME="Lennart's Tablet" ICON_NAME=computer-tablet CHASSIS=tablet DEPLOYMENT=production