Host ID.

[Pawel Worach]

Pawel Jakub Dawidek wrote:
> Hi.
> 
> After initial discussion on IRC, I'd like to propose an addition...
> I want to use it with ZFS, but I thought it may be useful in general, so
> here it goes:
> 
> I'd like to assign a unique ID to the system on first boot.
> 
> When system starts, /etc/rc.d/hostid script checks if /hostid file
> exists, if it doesn't, it creates it via 'uuidgen > /hostid'.
> 
> It will also set kern.hostuuid sysctl to this value and first four bytes
> of MD5(kern.hostuuid) will be stored in kern.hostid. It will allow to
> use gethostid(3).
> 
> If root file system is read-only, different uuid will be genrated on
> each boot. Not sure if anything better can be done here.
> 
> As I said, I think it may be genrally useful. Imagine using it with
> magic/variant symlinks, for example.
> 
> Comments?
> 

What about ...

# kenv smbios.system.uuid
63F8BC81-475C-11CB-A074-CA3B9005F8F6

Not all systems have SMBIOSen but maybe it can be used instead of 
/{,etc}/hostid if available ?

Regards
-- 
Pawel