13“ MacBook Air Terminal says ” (base) UNKNOWN

Question

Usually when I open the terminal, the first part of the command line says (base) john-doe-air, but when I opened it up today, it comes up with the following.

What should I do to rectify this issue? Thank you.

NB: For privacy reasons, I have changed the name to John Doe.

Answer 1

The UNKNOWN part is your computer hostname, for some reasons it changed itself.

You can change the hostname from the Terminal using the following commands :

sudo scutil --set ComputerName "newname"
sudo scutil --set LocalHostName "newname"
sudo scutil --set HostName "newname"

Then flush your DNS cache with dscacheutil -flushcache and reboot your Mac.

You can also change it without using commands, in System Preferences > Sharing > Computer Name.