1dbus-uuidgen(1) General Commands Manual dbus-uuidgen(1)
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6 dbus-uuidgen - Utility to generate UUIDs
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9 dbus-uuidgen [--version] [--ensure[=FILENAME]] [--get[=FILENAME]]
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13 The dbus-uuidgen command generates or reads a universally unique ID.
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16 Note that the D-Bus UUID has no relationship to RFC 4122 and does not
17 generate UUIDs compatible with that spec. Many systems have a separate
18 command for that (often called "uuidgen").
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21 See http://www.freedesktop.org/software/dbus/ for more information
22 about D-Bus.
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25 The primary usage of dbus-uuidgen is to run in the post-install script
26 of a D-Bus package like this:
27 dbus-uuidgen --ensure
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30 This will ensure that /var/lib/dbus/machine-id exists and has the uuid
31 in it. It won't overwrite an existing uuid, since this id should
32 remain fixed for a single machine until the next reboot at least.
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35 The important properties of the machine UUID are that 1) it remains
36 unchanged until the next reboot and 2) it is different for any two run‐
37 ning instances of the OS kernel. That is, if two processes see the same
38 UUID, they should also see the same shared memory, UNIX domain sockets,
39 local X displays, localhost.localdomain resolution, process IDs, and so
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43 If you run dbus-uuidgen with no options it just prints a new uuid made
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47 If you run it with --get, it prints the machine UUID by default, or the
48 UUID in the specified file if you specify a file.
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51 If you try to change an existing machine-id on a running system, it
52 will probably result in bad things happening. Don't try to change this
53 file. Also, don't make it the same on two different systems; it needs
54 to be different anytime there are two different kernels running.
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57 The UUID should be different on two different virtual machines, because
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62 The following options are supported:
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64 --get[=FILENAME]
65 If a filename is not given, defaults to localstate‐
66 dir/lib/dbus/machine-id (localstatedir is usually /var). If this
67 file exists and is valid, the uuid in the file is printed on
68 stdout. Otherwise, the command exits with a nonzero status.
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71 --ensure[=FILENAME]
72 If a filename is not given, defaults to localstate‐
73 dir/lib/dbus/machine-id (localstatedir is usually /var). If this
74 file exists then it will be validated, and a failure code
75 returned if it contains the wrong thing. If the file does not
76 exist, it will be created with a new uuid in it. On success,
77 prints no output.
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80 --version
81 Print the version of dbus-uuidgen
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85 See http://www.freedesktop.org/software/dbus/doc/AUTHORS
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89 Please send bug reports to the D-Bus mailing list or bug tracker, see
90 http://www.freedesktop.org/software/dbus/
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94 dbus-uuidgen(1)