machine-info — Local machine information file
/etc/machine-info
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.
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. 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.
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".
HARDWARE_VENDOR=¶Specifies the hardware vendor. If unspecified, the hardware vendor set in DMI or hwdb(7) will be used.
HARDWARE_MODEL=¶Specifies the hardware model. If unspecified, the hardware model set in DMI or hwdb(7) will be used.
PRETTY_HOSTNAME="Lennart's Tablet" ICON_NAME=computer-tablet CHASSIS=tablet DEPLOYMENT=production