Universal Blue•8mo ago

@uBlue Members anyone else seeing these /etc/hostname errors? breaks distroboxes

Jj0rge @uBlue Members anyone else seeing these /etc/hostname errors? breaks distroboxes

Kyle Gospo•4/28/25, 5:41 PM

nae

HikariKnight•4/28/25, 5:41 PM

nope nothing here

Jj0rge @uBlue Members anyone else seeing these /etc/hostname errors? breaks distroboxes

bsherman•4/28/25, 5:41 PM

no: but i don't use distrobox much

j0rgeOP•4/28/25, 5:41 PM

me either

Kyle Gospo•4/28/25, 5:41 PM

kylegospo@proteus:~$ cat /etc/hostname
proteus

kylegospo@proteus:~$ cat /etc/hostname
proteus

Kyle Gospo•4/28/25, 5:41 PM

kylegospo@proteus:~$ distrobox enter fedora
📦[kylegospo@fedora ~]$

kylegospo@proteus:~$ distrobox enter fedora
📦[kylegospo@fedora ~]$

j0rgeOP•4/28/25, 5:44 PM

ok so my 42 machine has a hostname but my LTS one does not.

j0rgeOP•4/28/25, 5:45 PM

if we touch an empty hostname file if it's missing that seems to solve the issue

Robert•4/28/25, 5:46 PM

The issue I believe is if you create a Distrobox while there's an os-release present, then update the host to an image which remove it, the container fails to start up

j0rgeOP•4/28/25, 5:46 PM

update the host to remove what?

Robert•4/28/25, 5:47 PM

Perform an update on the host. A recent report said rolling back to a previous update restored the file

j0rgeOP•4/28/25, 5:47 PM

yeah I can't replicate on my F42 machine

j0rgeOP•4/28/25, 5:47 PM

but my LTS machine is missing the file

j0rgeOP•4/28/25, 5:51 PM

Oh interesting!

j0rgeOP•4/28/25, 5:51 PM

the machines are DX only

M2•4/28/25, 6:20 PM

i do not have an /etc/hostname

M2•4/28/25, 6:20 PM

M2•4/28/25, 6:20 PM

No static hostname

M2•4/28/25, 6:22 PM

I believe instead its getting the default hostname from

/etc/os-release

/etc/os-release

M2•4/28/25, 6:22 PM

M2•4/28/25, 6:23 PM

https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/latest/hostname.html

j0rgeOP•4/28/25, 6:25 PM

ok so what should we do?

Robert•4/28/25, 6:28 PM

[Unit]
name=Universal Blue Missing /etc/hostname Workaround
description=Workaround for the missing /etc/hostname file on Universal Blue systems
after=network.target
ConditionPathExists=!/etc/hostname

[Service]
ExecStart=/bin/sh -c 'echo "%H" > /etc/hostname'

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

[Unit]
name=Universal Blue Missing /etc/hostname Workaround
description=Workaround for the missing /etc/hostname file on Universal Blue systems
after=network.target
ConditionPathExists=!/etc/hostname

[Service]
ExecStart=/bin/sh -c 'echo "%H" > /etc/hostname'

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

Something like this?

j0rgeOP•4/28/25, 6:30 PM

sgtm, does anyone hate this?

j0rgeOP•4/28/25, 6:30 PM

can we toss this in one of the service packages so we can fix lts and bluefin in one place?

j0rgeOP•4/28/25, 6:31 PM

No idea on aurora, so far looks to be bluefin only?

RRobert ``` [Unit] name=Universal Blue Missing /etc/hostname Workaround description=Work...

M2•4/28/25, 6:32 PM

The only thing weird is if a user is truly using dhcp for setting hostnames. I would maybe add a stamp file instead for the conditions check

Robert•4/28/25, 6:33 PM

Do they not have /etc/hostname files? Or does their

hostname

hostname

not return what DHCP assigned?

Robert•4/28/25, 6:33 PM

I would expect

$ hostname

$ hostname

to always give the desired name, which is what the %H does

M2•4/28/25, 6:34 PM

i have no idea what takes precedence. If /etc/hostname or a transient hostname

M2•4/28/25, 6:34 PM

as in we are making a transient hostname static by writing it to /etc/hostname

Robert•4/28/25, 6:35 PM

And also, since we have no idea what caused it, it could happen again, so something more automated than stampfiles would be ideal

Jj0rge can we toss this in one of the service packages so we can fix lts and bluefin in...

renner•4/28/25, 6:35 PM

Someone reported the same issue yesterday on aurora
https://github.com/ublue-os/aurora/issues/393

Jj0rge @uBlue Members anyone else seeing these /etc/hostname errors? breaks distroboxes

tangentsoft•4/28/25, 6:36 PM

I reported it a few weeks ago, and it came up again last week. I just rebuilt all my ’boxes rather than mess with workarounds.

j0rgeOP•4/28/25, 6:36 PM

if it's been a few weeks we'd get way more reports wouldn't we?

tangentsoft•4/28/25, 6:37 PM

Either people are building clean boxes atop 42, or rebuilding like I did, or just not using Distrobox all that much.

tangentsoft•4/28/25, 6:37 PM

(I doubt the latter, but I include the possibility for completeness.)

tangentsoft•4/28/25, 6:37 PM

It's easy to replicate and see via podman inspect myboxpodman inspect mybox

M2•4/28/25, 6:41 PM

i think distrobox usage has gone down a bit.

brew + flatpak

j0rgeOP•4/28/25, 6:41 PM

I have an issue filed to remove it from non-dx bluefins

j0rgeOP•4/28/25, 6:42 PM

but that's more because of boxbuddy, leaving distrobox is fine, it's important

j0rgeOP•4/28/25, 6:42 PM

but this new GUI looks promising too

j0rgeOP•4/28/25, 6:42 PM

but we can handle that later

j0rgeOP•4/28/25, 6:43 PM

https://github.com/ranfdev/DistroShelf

j0rgeOP•4/28/25, 6:43 PM

ok so if bazzite is not affected then maybe it's something we did in the packages repo? Something that bluefin and aurora share

Robert•4/28/25, 6:44 PM

@M2 Which image are you using? Is your personal image based off Bazzite?

M2•4/28/25, 6:44 PM

personal image based on bluefin

M2•4/28/25, 6:44 PM

base bluefin

inffy•4/28/25, 6:44 PM

The reports only surfaced after this weeks stable release

M2•4/28/25, 6:45 PM

i'm on an image that was built this morning as well

[Unit] name=Universal Blue Missing /etc/hostname Workaround description=Workaround for the missing /etc/hostname file on Universal Blue systems after=network.target ConditionPathExists=!/etc/hostname [Service] ExecStart=/bin/sh -c 'echo "%H" > /etc/hostname' [Install] WantedBy=default.target

@uBlue Members anyone else seeing these /etc/hostname errors? breaks distroboxes

Similar Threads

Similar Threads

Similar Threads