systemd-firstboot(1) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | CREDENTIALS | EXIT STATUS | KERNEL COMMAND LINE | SEE ALSO | NOTES | COLOPHON

SYSTEMD-FIRSTBOOT(1)        systemd-firstboot       SYSTEMD-FIRSTBOOT(1)

NAME         top

       systemd-firstboot, systemd-firstboot.service - Initialize basic
       system settings on or before the first boot-up of a system

SYNOPSIS         top


       systemd-firstboot [OPTIONS...]

       systemd-firstboot.service

DESCRIPTION         top

       systemd-firstboot initializes basic system settings interactively
       during the first boot, or non-interactively on an offline system
       image. The service is started during boot if
       ConditionFirstBoot=yes is met, which essentially means that /etc/
       is unpopulated, see systemd.unit(5) for details.

       The following settings may be configured:

       •   The machine ID of the system

       •   The system locale, more specifically the two locale variables
           LANG= and LC_MESSAGES

       •   The system keyboard map

       •   The system time zone

       •   The system hostname

       •   The kernel command line used when installing kernel images

       •   The root user's password and shell

       Each of the fields may either be queried interactively by users,
       set non-interactively on the tool's command line, or be copied
       from a host system that is used to set up the system image.

       If a setting is already initialized, it will not be overwritten
       and the user will not be prompted for the setting.

       Note that this tool operates directly on the file system and does
       not involve any running system services, unlike localectl(1),
       timedatectl(1) or hostnamectl(1). This allows systemd-firstboot
       to operate on mounted but not booted disk images and in early
       boot. It is not recommended to use systemd-firstboot on the
       running system after it has been set up.

OPTIONS         top

       The following options are understood:

       --root=root
           Takes a directory path as an argument. All paths will be
           prefixed with the given alternate root path, including config
           search paths. This is useful to operate on a system image
           mounted to the specified directory instead of the host system
           itself.

           Added in version 216.

       --image=path
           Takes a path to a disk image file or block device node. If
           specified all operations are applied to file system in the
           indicated disk image. This is similar to --root= but operates
           on file systems stored in disk images or block devices. The
           disk image should either contain just a file system or a set
           of file systems within a GPT partition table, following the
           Discoverable Partitions Specification[1]. For further
           information on supported disk images, see systemd-nspawn(1)'s
           switch of the same name.

           Added in version 246.

       --locale=LOCALE, --locale-messages=LOCALE
           Sets the system locale, more specifically the LANG= and
           LC_MESSAGES settings. The argument should be a valid locale
           identifier, such as "de_DE.UTF-8". This controls the
           locale.conf(5) configuration file.

           Added in version 216.

       --keymap=KEYMAP
           Sets the system keyboard layout. The argument should be a
           valid keyboard map, such as "de-latin1". This controls the
           "KEYMAP" entry in the vconsole.conf(5) configuration file.

           Added in version 236.

       --timezone=TIMEZONE
           Sets the system time zone. The argument should be a valid
           time zone identifier, such as "Europe/Berlin". This controls
           the localtime(5) symlink.

           Added in version 216.

       --hostname=HOSTNAME
           Sets the system hostname. The argument should be a hostname,
           compatible with DNS. This controls the hostname(5)
           configuration file.

           Added in version 216.

       --setup-machine-id
           Initialize the system's machine ID to a random ID. This
           controls the machine-id(5) file.

           This option only works in combination with --root= or
           --image=. On a running system, machine-id is written by the
           manager with help from systemd-machine-id-commit.service(8).

           Added in version 216.

       --machine-id=ID
           Set the system's machine ID to the specified value. The same
           restrictions apply as to --setup-machine-id.

           Added in version 216.

       --root-password=PASSWORD, --root-password-file=PATH,
       --root-password-hashed=HASHED_PASSWORD
           Sets the password of the system's root user. This
           creates/modifies the passwd(5) and shadow(5) files. This
           setting exists in three forms: --root-password= accepts the
           password to set directly on the command line,
           --root-password-file= reads it from a file and
           --root-password-hashed= accepts an already hashed password on
           the command line. See shadow(5) for more information on the
           format of the hashed password. Note that it is not
           recommended to specify plaintext passwords on the command
           line, as other users might be able to see them simply by
           invoking ps(1).

           Added in version 216.

       --root-shell=SHELL
           Sets the shell of the system's root user. This
           creates/modifies the passwd(5) file.

           Added in version 246.

       --kernel-command-line=CMDLINE
           Sets the system's kernel command line. This controls the
           /etc/kernel/cmdline file which is used by kernel-install(8).

           Added in version 246.

       --prompt-locale, --prompt-keymap, --prompt-timezone,
       --prompt-hostname, --prompt-root-password, --prompt-root-shell
           Prompt the user interactively for a specific basic setting.
           Note that any explicit configuration settings specified on
           the command line take precedence, and the user is not
           prompted for it.

           Added in version 216.

       --prompt
           Query the user for locale, keymap, timezone, hostname, root's
           password, and root's shell. This is equivalent to specifying
           --prompt-locale, --prompt-keymap, --prompt-timezone,
           --prompt-hostname, --prompt-root-password,
           --prompt-root-shell in combination.

           Added in version 216.

       --copy-locale, --copy-keymap, --copy-timezone,
       --copy-root-password, --copy-root-shell
           Copy a specific basic setting from the host. This only works
           in combination with --root= or --image=.

           Added in version 216.

       --copy
           Copy locale, keymap, time zone, root password and shell from
           the host. This is equivalent to specifying --copy-locale,
           --copy-keymap, --copy-timezone, --copy-root-password,
           --copy-root-shell in combination.

           Added in version 216.

       --force
           Write configuration even if the relevant files already exist.
           Without this option, systemd-firstboot doesn't modify or
           replace existing files. Note that when configuring the root
           account, even with this option, systemd-firstboot only
           modifies the entry of the "root" user, leaving other entries
           in /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow intact.

           Added in version 246.

       --reset
           If specified, all existing files that are configured by
           systemd-firstboot are removed. Note that the files are
           removed regardless of whether they'll be configured with a
           new value or not. This operation ensures that the next boot
           of the image will be considered a first boot, and
           systemd-firstboot will prompt again to configure each of the
           removed files.

           Added in version 254.

       --delete-root-password
           Removes the password of the system's root user, enabling
           login as root without a password unless the root account is
           locked. Note that this is extremely insecure and hence this
           option should not be used lightly.

           Added in version 246.

       --welcome=
           Takes a boolean argument. By default when prompting the user
           for configuration options a brief welcome text is shown
           before the first question is asked. Pass false to this option
           to turn off the welcome text.

           Added in version 246.

       -h, --help
           Print a short help text and exit.

       --version
           Print a short version string and exit.

CREDENTIALS         top

       systemd-firstboot supports the service credentials logic as
       implemented by ImportCredential=/LoadCredential=/SetCredential=
       (see systemd.exec(1) for details). The following credentials are
       used when passed in:

       passwd.hashed-password.root, passwd.plaintext-password.root
           A hashed or plaintext version of the root password to use, in
           place of prompting the user. These credentials are equivalent
           to the same ones defined for the systemd-sysusers.service(8)
           service.

           Added in version 249.

       passwd.shell.root
           Specifies the shell binary to use for the specified account.
           Equivalent to the credential of the same name defined for the
           systemd-sysusers.service(8) service.

           Added in version 249.

       firstboot.locale, firstboot.locale-messages
           These credentials specify the locale settings to set during
           first boot, in place of prompting the user.

           Added in version 249.

       firstboot.keymap
           This credential specifies the keyboard setting to set during
           first boot, in place of prompting the user.

           Note the relationship to the vconsole.keymap credential
           understood by systemd-vconsole-setup.service(8): both
           ultimately affect the same setting, but firstboot.keymap is
           written into /etc/vconsole.conf on first boot (if not already
           configured), and then read from there by
           systemd-vconsole-setup, while vconsole.keymap is read on
           every boot, and is not persisted to disk (but any
           configuration in vconsole.conf will take precedence if
           present).

           Added in version 249.

       firstboot.timezone
           This credential specifies the system timezone setting to set
           during first boot, in place of prompting the user.

           Added in version 249.

       Note that by default the systemd-firstboot.service unit file is
       set up to inherit the listed credentials from the service
       manager. Thus, when invoking a container with an unpopulated
       /etc/ for the first time it is possible to configure the root
       user's password to be "systemd" like this:

           # systemd-nspawn --image=... --set-credential=firstboot.locale:de_DE.UTF-8 ...

       Note that these credentials are only read and applied during the
       first boot process. Once they are applied they remain applied for
       subsequent boots, and the credentials are not considered anymore.

EXIT STATUS         top

       On success, 0 is returned, a non-zero failure code otherwise.

KERNEL COMMAND LINE         top

       systemd.firstboot=
           Takes a boolean argument, defaults to on. If off,
           systemd-firstboot.service won't interactively query the user
           for basic settings at first boot, even if those settings are
           not initialized yet.

           Added in version 233.

SEE ALSO         top

       systemd(1), locale.conf(5), vconsole.conf(5), localtime(5),
       hostname(5), machine-id(5), shadow(5),
       systemd-machine-id-setup(1), localectl(1), timedatectl(1),
       hostnamectl(1)

NOTES         top

        1. Discoverable Partitions Specification
           https://uapi-group.org/specifications/specs/discoverable_partitions_specification

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the systemd (systemd system and service
       manager) project.  Information about the project can be found at
       ⟨http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd⟩.  If you have
       a bug report for this manual page, see
       ⟨http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/#bugreports⟩.
       This page was obtained from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://github.com/systemd/systemd.git⟩ on 2023-12-22.  (At that
       time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
       repository was 2023-12-22.)  If you discover any rendering
       problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there
       is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
       corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       man-pages@man7.org

systemd 255                                         SYSTEMD-FIRSTBOOT(1)

Pages that refer to this page: homectl(1)hostnamectl(1)localectl(1)systemd-machine-id-setup(1)systemd-nspawn(1)timedatectl(1)hostname(5)locale.conf(5)localtime(5)machine-id(5)systemd.directives(7)systemd.index(7)systemd.system-credentials(7)systemd-machine-id-commit.service(8)