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 meta data.
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 meta data 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.
OPTIONS
The following machine meta data 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[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", "server", "tablet", "handset", 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.
EXAMPLE
PRETTY_HOSTNAME="Lennart's Tablet"
ICON_NAME=computer-tablet
CHASSIS=tablet
SEE ALSO
systemd(1), os-release(5), hostname(5), machine-id(5), hostnamectl(1), systemd-hostnamed.service(8)
NOTES
1. XDG Icon Naming Specification
http://standards.freedesktop.org/icon-naming-spec/icon-naming-spec-latest.html
systemd 208 MACHINE-INFO(5)