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HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
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NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | COMMANDS | OPTIONS | EXIT STATUS | SEE ALSO | NOTES | COLOPHON |
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HOSTNAMECTL(1) hostnamectl HOSTNAMECTL(1)
hostnamectl - Control the system hostname
hostnamectl [OPTIONS...] {COMMAND}
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.
The following commands are understood:
status
Show system hostname and related information. If no command is
specified, this is the implied default.
Added in version 195.
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).
If the question mark character "?" appears in the hostname,
it is automatically substituted by a hexadecimal character
derived from the machine-id(5) when applied, securely and
deterministically by cryptographic hashing. Example:
"foobar-????-????" will automatically expand to
"foobar-92a9-061c" or similar, depending on the local machine
ID.
Added in version 249.
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[1].
Added in version 249.
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.
Added in version 249.
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".
Added in version 249.
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".
Added in version 249.
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.
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.
Added in version 195.
-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 port ssh is listening
on, separated by ":", and then 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. Put IPv6 addresses in brackets.
-M, --machine=
Execute operation on a local container. Specify a container
name to connect to, optionally prefixed by a user name to
connect as and a separating "@" character. If the special
string ".host" is used in place of the container name, a
connection to the local system is made (which is useful to
connect to a specific user's user bus: "--user
--machine=lennart@.host"). If the "@" syntax is not used, the
connection is made as root user. If the "@" syntax is used
either the left hand side or the right hand side may be
omitted (but not both) in which case the local user name and
".host" are implied.
--no-ask-password
Do not query the user for authentication for privileged
operations.
-h, --help
Print a short help text and exit.
--version
Print a short version string and exit.
--json=MODE
Shows output formatted as JSON. Expects one of "short" (for
the shortest possible output without any redundant whitespace
or line breaks), "pretty" (for a pretty version of the same,
with indentation and line breaks) or "off" (to turn off JSON
output, the default).
-j
Equivalent to --json=pretty if running on a terminal, and
--json=short otherwise.
On success, 0 is returned, a non-zero failure code otherwise.
systemd(1), hostname(1), hostname(5), machine-info(5),
systemctl(1), systemd-hostnamed.service(8), systemd-firstboot(1)
1. Icon Naming Specification
https://standards.freedesktop.org/icon-naming-spec/icon-naming-spec-latest.html
This page is part of the systemd (systemd system and service
manager) project. Information about the project can be found at
⟨http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd⟩. If you have a
bug report for this manual page, see
⟨http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/#bugreports⟩.
This page was obtained from the project's upstream Git repository
⟨https://github.com/systemd/systemd.git⟩ on 2025-08-11. (At that
time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
repository was 2025-08-11.) If you discover any rendering
problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there is
a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
(which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
man-pages@man7.org
systemd 258~rc2 HOSTNAMECTL(1)
Pages that refer to this page: systemd-firstboot(1), hostname(5), machine-info(5), org.freedesktop.hostname1(5), systemd.directives(7), systemd.index(7), systemd-hostnamed.service(8), systemd-machined.service(8)
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HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
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