Getting a unique id from a unix-like system

Question

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 wa

Answer 1

As someone else stated, the dmidecode command is an option.

[root@sri-0000-0003 WebGui]# dmidecode -s system-uuid
03001234-1234-1234-1234-000700012345

I edited the output to hide the UUID of the system I tested on.

There are other things that you can get from dmidecode. dmidecode -t will tell you the categories.

[root@sri-0000-0003 WebGui]# dmidecode -t
dmidecode: option requires an argument -- 't'
Type number or keyword expected
Valid type keywords are:
  bios
  system
  baseboard
  chassis
  processor
  memory
  cache
  connect

If you're using actual hardware instead of a virtual machine then dmidecode -t processor would be a good option.

[root@sri-0000-0003 WebGui]# dmidecode -t processor
# dmidecode 3.1
Getting SMBIOS data from sysfs.
SMBIOS 3.0.0 present.

Handle 0x0041, DMI type 4, 48 bytes
Processor Information
        Socket Designation: U3E1
        Type: Central Processor
        Family: Core i3
        Manufacturer: Intel(R) Corporation
        ID: E3 00 00 00 11 22 33 44

Given that the number of processor manufactures is small, this seems like a good alternate to dmidecode -s system-uuid. However, under virtualbox, dmidecode -t processor won't give you anything useful. I don't know about any other virtual platforms.

I'm willing to bet that dmidecode -s system-uuid will also work inside a docker container too but, I can't verify that.