Getting a unique id from a unix-like system

linux unix uniqueidentifier
Blue picture Blue · Nov 30, 2008 · Viewed 45k times · Source

I want to get from any Unix-like system (if this is possible) a unique id that will be persistent every time my application runs in the same machine. If it is possible, I want to get the same id from Linux or FreeBSD or Solaris, etc... I don't want to generate a new id for each machine, but get an already existent id, and I prefer this id to come from the operating system and I don't prefer to use something like the MAC address.

If there is no other option available, I can use MAC in combination with something else, for example the id can be the md5 hash of the combination of the MAC address and something else.

I would like to listen to your suggestions.

If it is useful, my application is written in C/C++.

The aim of all this is to prevent a user to run my application for two or more times. I want to run just once.

Answer

Jason Day picture Jason Day · Dec 5, 2008

How about the UUID of the root filesystem? You can get the root filesystem device from /etc/fstab, either by manually parsing the file or by using getfsent (3) or getfsfile (3). Once you have the device, you can get the UUID by either checking the links in /dev/disk/by-uuid or from the blkid command.

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