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man pages section 1: User Commands

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Updated: Wednesday, July 27, 2022
 
 

hostname(1)

Name

hostname - set or print name of current host system

Synopsis

/usr/bin/hostname [[-t] name-of-host]
/usr/bin/hostname [-D]

Description

When no arguments are given, the hostname command prints the name of the current host, as given before the login prompt. The hostname can be set by giving an argument. The change of the hostname is permanent unless the –t option is specified. The –t option changes the hostname only in the running kernel and does not update the system configuration to make the name persist across a reboot.

By default, any system configured as a DHCP client will use the hostname returned by DHCP as its hostname. This default behavior is altered once the hostname is set manually using the hostname command. The –D option can be used to return the system back to the default behavior so that any DHCP client hostname will be given precedence over the manually defined hostname. Note that this default behavior may change in a future Solaris release and the semantics of the –D option might change to reflect any such change.

Setting the hostname temporarily with the –t option requires the {PRIV_SYS_ADMIN} privilege. Setting the hostname permanently, or using the –D option, requires the authorization to set properties of the svc:/system/identity:node SMF service. See smf_security(7).

Attributes

See attributes(7) for descriptions of the following attributes:

ATTRIBUTE TYPE
ATTRIBUTE VALUE
Availability
system/core-os

See Also

uname(1), nodename(5), attributes(7), privileges(7), smf_security(7)

History

Support for the –t and –D options, and for persistent setting of the hostname, was added in the Oracle Solaris 11.1.0 release.

The hostname command has been present in all Sun and Oracle releases of Solaris.