machine-info(5) — Linux manual page
MACHINE-INFO(5) machine-info MACHINE-INFO(5)
NAME
machine-info - Local machine information file
SYNOPSIS
/etc/machine-info
DESCRIPTION
The /etc/machine-info file contains machine metadata.
The format of machine-info is a newline-separated list of
environment-like shell-compatible variable assignments, ignoring
comments and empty lines. 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. See os-release(5) for a detailed
description of the format.
/etc/machine-info contains metadata about the machine that is set
by the user or administrator. The settings configured here have
the highest precedence. When not set, appropriate values may be
determined automatically, based on the information about the
hardware or other configuration files. It is thus completely fine
for this file to not be present.
You may use hostnamectl(1) to change the settings of this file
from the command line.
OPTIONS
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
hostname for presentation purposes.
ICON_NAME=
An icon identifying this machine according to the XDG Icon
Naming Specification[1]. 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", "convertible", "server",
"tablet", "handset", "watch", and "embedded", as well as the
special chassis types "vm" and "container" for virtualized
systems that lack an immediate physical chassis.
Note that most systems allow detection of the chassis type
automatically (based on firmware information or suchlike).
This setting should only be used to override a misdetection
or to manually configure the chassis type where automatic
detection is not available.
Added in version 197.
DEPLOYMENT=
Describes the system deployment environment. One of the
following is suggested: "development", "integration",
"staging", "production".
Added in version 216.
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".
Added in version 216.
HARDWARE_VENDOR=
Specifies the hardware vendor. If unspecified, the hardware
vendor set in DMI or hwdb(7) will be used.
Added in version 251.
HARDWARE_MODEL=
Specifies the hardware model. If unspecified, the hardware
model set in DMI or hwdb(7) will be used.
Added in version 251.
EXAMPLE
PRETTY_HOSTNAME="Lennart's Tablet"
ICON_NAME=computer-tablet
CHASSIS=tablet
DEPLOYMENT=production
SEE ALSO
systemd(1), os-release(5), hostname(5), machine-id(5),
hostnamectl(1), systemd-hostnamed.service(8)
NOTES
1. XDG Icon Naming Specification
https://standards.freedesktop.org/icon-naming-spec/icon-naming-spec-latest.html
COLOPHON
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systemd 257~devel MACHINE-INFO(5)
Pages that refer to this page: hostnamectl(1), hostname(5), machine-id(5), org.freedesktop.hostname1(5), os-release(5), systemd.link(5), systemd.network(5), systemd.unit(5), systemd.directives(7), systemd.index(7), systemd-hostnamed.service(8)