Fixing macOS terminal ‘@UNKNOWN’ error (HostName not Set)
tldr: mac terminal host name brokey
Anyways, a few days into a clean install of Big Sur*, and shortly after my first ever Medium post, my terminal has decided it no longer likes it’s name.
*this happened in Catalina also.
I don’t believe that I’ve caused this, however if I find out the root cause and it was me (or anything else) I will update this post accordingly.
To the issue:
After reading through the article here which is a deep dive into all the different system naming in macOS, I checked each name suggested and found that in the WINS tab my NetBIOS name has changed to UNKNOWN:
The article describes that this is self assigned and cannot be changed :(
However, I then proceeded to check the host name, and after running the below it looks like I’ve found the problem:
scutil --get HostName
To resolve this, you can run:
sudo scutil --set HostName "Tim-Apple"
You’ll need to enter your password after, and then viola, once you restart terminal your newly set name should be there:
Hopefully this is helpful for anyone running into the same issue as I was struggling to find a direct answer when googling.
I’ve still got a second line support call with Apple later this week, so if I have an update on the root cause of this I’ll update the article accordingly.
Thanks for reading and I hope you have a wonderful day :)