summaryrefslogtreecommitdiff
path: root/man/machine-id.xml
blob: 97c622c6faf671f2ef5bd3d2afc14baf752231b0 (plain)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
<?xml version='1.0'?> <!--*-nxml-*-->
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current/xhtml/docbook.xsl"?>
<!DOCTYPE refentry PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.2//EN"
        "http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.2/docbookx.dtd">

<!--
  This file is part of systemd.

  Copyright 2010 Lennart Poettering

  systemd is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
  under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
  the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
  (at your option) any later version.

  systemd is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
  WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
  MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
  General Public License for more details.

  You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
  along with systemd; If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
-->

<refentry id="machine-id">
        <refentryinfo>
                <title>/etc/machine-id</title>
                <productname>systemd</productname>

                <authorgroup>
                        <author>
                                <contrib>Developer</contrib>
                                <firstname>Lennart</firstname>
                                <surname>Poettering</surname>
                                <email>lennart@poettering.net</email>
                        </author>
                </authorgroup>
        </refentryinfo>

        <refmeta>
                <refentrytitle>machine-id</refentrytitle>
                <manvolnum>5</manvolnum>
        </refmeta>

        <refnamediv>
                <refname>machine-id</refname>
                <refpurpose>local machine ID configuration file</refpurpose>
        </refnamediv>

        <refsynopsisdiv>
                <para><filename>/etc/machine-id</filename></para>
        </refsynopsisdiv>

        <refsect1>
                <title>Description</title>

                <para>The <filename>/etc/machine-id</filename> file
                contains the unique machine id of the local system
                that is set during installation. The machine ID is a
                single newline-terminated, hexadecimal, lowercase 32
                character machine ID string. (When decoded from
                hexadecimal this corresponds with a 16 byte/128 bit
                string.)</para>

                <para>The machine ID is usually generated from a
                random source during system installation and stays
                constant for all subsequent boots. Optionally, for
                stateless systems it is generated during runtime at
                boot if it is found to be empty.</para>

                <para>The machine ID does not change based on user
                configuration, or when hardware is replaced.</para>

                <para>This machine ID adheres to the same format and
                logic as the D-Bus machine ID.</para>

                <para>Programs may use this ID to identify the host
                with a globally unique ID in the network, that does
                not change even if the local network configuration
                changes. Due to this and its greater length it is
                a more useful replacement for the
                <citerefentry><refentrytitle>gethostid</refentrytitle><manvolnum>3</manvolnum></citerefentry>
                call POSIX specifies.</para>

                <para>The
                <citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd-machine-id-setup</refentrytitle><manvolnum>1</manvolnum></citerefentry>
                tool may be used by installer tools to initialize the
                machine ID at install time.</para>
        </refsect1>

        <refsect1>
                <title>Relation to OSF UUIDs</title>

                <para>Note that the machine ID historically is not an
                OSF UUID as defined by <ulink
                url="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4122">RFC
                4122</ulink>, nor a Microsoft GUID. Starting with
                systemd v30 newly generated machine IDs however do
                qualify as v4 UUIDs.</para>

                <para>In order to maintain compatibility with existing
                installations, an application requiring a UUID should
                decode the machine ID, and then apply the following
                operations to turn it into a valid OSF v4 UUID. With
                <literal>id</literal> being an unsigned character
                array:</para>

                <programlisting>/* Set UUID version to 4 --- truly random generation */
id[6] = (id[6] &amp; 0x0F) | 0x40;
/* Set the UUID variant to DCE */
id[8] = (id[8] &amp; 0x3F) | 0x80;</programlisting>

                <para>(This code is inspired by
                <literal>generate_random_uuid()</literal> of
                <filename>drivers/char/random.c</filename> from the
                kernel sources.)</para>

        </refsect1>

        <refsect1>
                <title>History</title>

                <para>The simple configuration file format of
                <filename>/etc/machine-id</filename> originates in the
                <filename>/var/lib/dbus/machine-id</filename> file
                introduced by D-Bus. In fact this latter file might be a
                symlink to
                <varname>/etc/machine-id</varname>.</para>
        </refsect1>

        <refsect1>
                  <title>See Also</title>
                  <para>
                          <citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd</refentrytitle><manvolnum>1</manvolnum></citerefentry>,
                          <citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd-machine-id-setup</refentrytitle><manvolnum>1</manvolnum></citerefentry>,
                          <citerefentry><refentrytitle>gethostid</refentrytitle><manvolnum>3</manvolnum></citerefentry>,
                          <citerefentry><refentrytitle>hostname</refentrytitle><manvolnum>5</manvolnum></citerefentry>,
                          <citerefentry><refentrytitle>machine-info</refentrytitle><manvolnum>5</manvolnum></citerefentry>,
                          <citerefentry><refentrytitle>os-release</refentrytitle><manvolnum>5</manvolnum></citerefentry>
                  </para>
        </refsect1>

</refentry>