hostnamectl

systemd

hostnamectl

Control the system hostname

hostnamectl

OPTIONS

COMMAND

Description

hostnamectl may be used to query and change the system hostname and related settings.

systemd-hostnamed.service(8) and this tool distinguish 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 the user-configured hostname (e.g. "lennarts-laptop"), and the transient hostname which is a fallback value received from network configuration (e.g. "node12345678"). If a static hostname is set to a valid value, then the transient hostname is not used.

Note that the pretty hostname has little restrictions on the characters and length used, while the static and transient hostnames are limited to the usually accepted characters of Internet domain names, and 64 characters at maximum (the latter being a Linux limitation).

Use systemd-firstboot(1) to initialize the system hostname for mounted (but not booted) system images.

Commands

The following commands are understood:

status
Show system hostname and related information. If no command is specified, this is the implied default.

hostname [<NAME>]
If no argument is given, print the system hostname. If an optional argument <NAME> is provided then the command changes 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 removing special characters and spaces. 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 hostnames are set, and the pretty hostname is left untouched.

The static and transient hostnames must each be either a single DNS label (a string composed of 7-bit ASCII lower-case characters and no spaces or dots, limited to the format allowed for DNS domain name labels), or a sequence of such labels separated by single dots that forms a valid DNS FQDN. The hostname must be at most 64 characters, which is a Linux limitation (DNS allows longer names).

icon-name [<NAME>]
If no argument is given, print the icon name of the system. If an optional argument <NAME> is provided then the command changes the 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.

chassis [<TYPE>]
If no argument is given, print the chassis type. If an optional argument <TYPE> is provided then the command changes 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, convertible, server, tablet, handset, watch, embedded, as well as the special chassis types vm and container for virtualized systems that lack an immediate physical chassis.

deployment [<ENVIRONMENT>]
If no argument is given, print the deployment environment. If an optional argument <ENVIRONMENT> is provided then the command changes the deployment environment to <ENVIRONMENT>. Argument <ENVIRONMENT> must be a single word without any control characters. One of the following is suggested: development, integration, staging, production.

location [<LOCATION>]
If no argument is given, print the location string for the system. If an optional argument <LOCATION> is provided then the command changes the location string for the system to <LOCATION>. Argument <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.

tags [<TAG>…]
If no argument is given, print the machine tags currently configured, as a colon-separated list. If one or more <TAG> arguments are provided then the command replaces the configured tags with the specified ones. Each argument may itself be a colon-separated list of tags, so that the tags may be specified either as multiple arguments or as a single colon-separated argument, or any combination thereof. Duplicate tags are removed and the resulting list is sorted before being stored. To remove all tags, invoke the command with a single empty string argument.

Alternatively, each argument may be prefixed with + or - to incrementally update the configured tags rather than replacing them: an argument prefixed with + adds all of its (colon-separated) tags to the list, one prefixed with - specifies a removal pattern. For example, hostnamectl tags +foo:bar -quux:ooo=* adds the tags foo and bar and removes quux and any assignment of ooo=. The prefix applies to the whole argument, i.e. to every tag listed within it. Adding a key=value tag replaces any value previously assigned to the same key. Prefixed and unprefixed arguments may not be combined in a single invocation. Removal patterns may use shell-style globbing to remove any matching tags, glob(7).

If --apply is specified, no <TAG> arguments may be given. Instead, systemd-hostnamed is asked to apply the tag configuration declared in the machine-tags.d/ directories, see machine-tags.d(5).

Machine tags are short labels that may be used to classify and group machines for management purposes, for example to identify the role a machine plays in a deployment, the fleet or organizational unit it belongs to, or any other administrator-defined attribute. Each individual tag must be 1…255 characters long and consist only of ASCII alphanumeric characters, -, . and =. A tag may optionally be parameterized with a value, in the form key=value, in which case the same key may not be assigned more than one distinct value. The tags are stored in the TAGS= field of /etc/machine-info; see machine-info(5) for details. They may also be matched against with the ConditionMachineTag=/AssertMachineTag= unit settings, see systemd.unit(5).

Options

The following options are understood:

--static; --transient; --pretty
If status is invoked (or no explicit command is given) and one of these switches is specified, hostnamectl will print out just this selected hostname.

This selection does not apply to JSON output: with --json=, status always prints the full status object.

If used with hostname, only the selected hostnames will be updated. When more than one of these switches are specified, all the specified hostnames will be updated.

--apply
When used with tags, ask systemd-hostnamed to apply the tag configuration from the machine-tags.d/ directories instead of setting the tags specified on the command line. See machine-tags.d(5) and the description of the tags command above.

When this option is used, tags to apply cannot be listed on the command line.

Exit status

On success, 0 is returned, a non-zero failure code otherwise.