Best way to get machine id on Linux?

Question

What is the best-practiced way to get an unique machine ID in GNU/Linux for i386 architecture?

Are there any good ways except the mac address?

The mac address is not guaranteed to be unique, as it can be changed — cEz, Nov 11 '22 at 14:54

score 61 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 14 '12 at 10:14

61

Depending on your kernel, the DMI information may be available via sysfs. Try those:

# cat /sys/class/dmi/id/board_serial
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
# cat /sys/class/dmi/id/product_uuid
xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx

or using a tool

# dmidecode -s baseboard-serial-number
...
# dmidecode -s system-uuid
...

answered Apr 14 '12 at 10:14

c00kiemon5ter

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While googling about the `/sys/class/dmi/id/board_serial` availability I have found http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/ids.html – Apr 14 '12 at 10:36
10

So, actually, I will use `/var/lib/dbus/machine-id`. – Apr 14 '12 at 10:43
4

That doesn't seem so portable, depending on dbus and all. – Thomas M. DuBuisson Apr 14 '12 at 11:16
That's very x86 specific. There is no such thing as `/sys/class/dmi/id/product_uuid` on Linux PPC (Apple based) for example. – malat Mar 05 '15 at 11:58
Is machine-id useful for licensing beside mac? – user4271704 Aug 10 '17 at 15:48
2

`/var/lib/dbus/machine-id` can be changed with sudo – Ivan Kolev Aug 06 '18 at 07:37
Which one will stay the same after the os is reinstalled? – Syco Nov 20 '21 at 23:54
Reading from `/sys` is not guaranteed as they may be 0600 and owned by root, same for running dmidecode – cEz Nov 11 '22 at 14:51

score 31 · Answer 2 · edited Oct 07 '21 at 07:59

31

On modern machines with systemd: machine id is created by systemd-machine-id-setup. The location of machine id is documented - in freedesktop machine-id and man machine-id and machine id has a more standardized format - see RFC4122. Just:

cat /etc/machine-id

edited Oct 07 '21 at 07:59

Community

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answered Jul 29 '20 at 07:30

KamilCuk

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the machine-id may be the same on cloned VMs. – pynexj Sep 15 '21 at 02:12
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But isn't that the whole idea of having a "cloned VM" of begin the same machine-id. Here the VM software seems to be the real problem as a clone is a to simplified command without specifying what the clone is used for. – Lothar Jul 08 '23 at 15:54

adnan kamili · Answer 3 · 2014-09-02T13:52:53.837

5

You can use lshal. This needs hal (apt-get install hal or yum install hal) to be installed first. This way you can access all the info of dmidecode without root permissions.

A non-root equivalent of

# dmidecode | grep -i uuid

will be

$ lshal |grep -i system.hardware.uuid

And similarly other info as per your needs.

edited Sep 02 '14 at 13:52

answered Mar 15 '14 at 08:32

adnan kamili

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If `lshal` is available on said system, this means `hal` is installed, which means `dbus` is installed. Therefore it is simply `cat /var/lib/dbus/machine-id` – malat Mar 05 '15 at 11:26
6

@malat it is clear from the question that user wants to generate a uuid which is permanent and doesn't change. "dbus/machine-id" can even change after every reboot. – adnan kamili Mar 13 '15 at 17:35
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Is machine-id useful for licensing beside mac? – user4271704 Aug 10 '17 at 15:49

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 06 '18 at 02:44

0

A simple and portable way of computing your own sysid may be to serialize uname(), gethostid() and some inodes like /home or your application homedir (obtained with stat()) etc. in a string and hash It.

answered Oct 06 '18 at 02:44

andrelsm

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Best way to get machine id on Linux?

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