Best way to get machine id on Linux?

Question

What is the best-practiced way to get an unique machine ID in GNU/Linux for i386 architecture?

Are there any good ways except the mac

Answer 1

You can use lshal. This needs hal (apt-get install hal or yum install hal) to be installed first. This way you can access all the info of dmidecode without root permissions.

A non-root equivalent of

# dmidecode | grep -i uuid

will be

$ lshal |grep -i system.hardware.uuid

And similarly other info as per your needs.