[Sunhelp] finding out serial #

[dhansen at zebra.net]

> now work. The upgrades were new products that came from SGI. The upgrade did not
> require that a specific upgrade kit be applied to a specific machine. Upgrade
> kits were selected and used completely at random and no MAC addresses/serial
> numbers changed.
> 
> It seem to me that the techs' statements conflict with my observations. I
> wouldn't suprise me if the techs didn't really know the details of how the
> serial number works. This is not intended to be a criticism of them. I don't
> think that it is realistic to expect them to know everything.

  I agree wholeheartedly. I just realized after reading your post that my previous
mailing wasn't quite clear on what I was basing it on and wanted to toss
that in to help clear up the discussion.

> I hope I am understanding the points of your comments and adding more
> clarification than confusion. If the discussion gets any deeper, it may be
> appropriate to communicate directly. A summary could later be posted to the
> mailing list for others.

  Oh yeah, I don't harbor any strong feelings one way or the other about it.
I just wanted to make sure that I clarified what my contributions to the 
thread were based on. But I am still curious as to what method they use
to do this (if anyone finds out definitively, let me know), I can't think of
one off of the top of my head and don't really have the time or
readily available resources to check it out for myself. Using a MAC
address seems rather efficient, as a serial number, since they are 
supposed to be unique. Only problem there is that amsysinfo and friends
can't rely on probing the NIC for that number since that unit can also
be changed out and some admins have a need for changing MAC 
addresses manually.


 -david