Hardware Serial Numbers under FreeBSD

[David Gilbert]

>>>>> "Dan" == Dan Mahoney <Dan> writes:

Dan> Hey all, I'm trying to create an inventory script for systems
Dan> that will be loaded via net-boot.  I was wondering if there was
Dan> any useful way to obtain the serial number of devices like the
Dan> hard drives, processor, and/or motherboard.  (as far as I can
Dan> guess, those are the only things likely to store a serial number
Dan> in a machine-readable format).

Dan> I'm scripting in perl, but of course have nothing against making
Dan> system calls to get at the low-level stuff.

Dan> Please email me, as I'm not subscribed.

Certainly the canonical way to get a serial number is the ethernet
hardware address.  On some cards, you can change it, but many copy
protection systems work on MAC addresses.

Now, most cards reset to their default MAC address on boot, so if you
run early enough, you should be fairly immune from tomjiggery.
ifconfig prints it out, among other commands.

The reason this is doubly good now is that most motherboards have
ethernet built in... so you could consider it (for the purposes of
inventory) a motherboard serial number.  Now... if there's more than
one interface showing up, I can't tell you an easy way to "know" which
one is built in.  Heh.

Dave.

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|David Gilbert, Independent Contractor.       | Two things can only be     |
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