[geeks] generating unique systemids

[Doug McLaren]

On Mon, Aug 27, 2007 at 02:57:00PM -0400, Dave K wrote:

| On 8/27/07, Charles Shannon Hendrix <shannon at widomaker.com> wrote:
| > Does anyone know a decent way to generate a unique system ID
| > for a PC server running FreeBSD?
| 
| First thought that popped into mind:
| 
| MAC Address of the primary interface?

That is the answer used by most commercial software that creates and
uses system IDs for licensing purposes.

Of course, the problems tend to be --

  -- which interface is the primary?  You might think you know, but
     often you just don't, or the smallest system change will change
     the order of the interfaces.

  -- MAC IDs are easy to change.

  -- ... but not so easy that most people won't want a new license key
     for their new hardware.

Other options would be cpu ID, system serial number (for certain
hardware that has a serial number in the bios) and the serial number
for the primary hard drive.  (Again, which is the primary?  And what
if they replace the drive?  And some drive interfaces/types might not
have one.  At least it's not so easy to fake ...)

-- 
Doug McLaren, dougmc at frenzied.us
`I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again'