dbus-uuidgen(1)

NAME
dbus-uuidgen - Utility to generate UUIDs

SYNOPSIS

dbus-uuidgen [--version] [--ensure[=FILENAME]] [--get[=FILENAME]]

DESCRIPTION
The dbus-uuidgen command generates or reads a universally unique ID.

See http://www.freedesktop.org/software/dbus/ for more information about D-Bus.

The primary usage of dbus-uuidgen is to run in the post-install script of a D-Bus package like this:
  dbus-uuidgen --ensure

This will ensure that /etc/dbus-1/machine-id exists and has the uuid in it. It won't overwrite an existing uuid, since this id should remain fixed for a single machine until the next reboot at least.

The important properties of the machine UUID are that 1) it remains unchanged until the next reboot and 2) it is different for any two running instances of the OS kernel. That is, if two processes see the same UUID, they should also see the same shared memory, UNIX domain sockets, local X displays, localhost.localdomain resolution, process IDs, and so forth.

If you run dbus-uuidgen with no options it just prints a new uuid made up out of thin air. This is similar to the regular "uuidgen" command.

If you run it with --get, it prints the machine uuid by default, or the uuid in the specified file if you specify a file.

The D-Bus UUID has no relationship to RFC 4122 and does not generate UUIDs compatible with that spec.

If you try to change an existing /etc/dbus-1/machine-id on a running system, it will probably result in bad things happening. Don't try to change this file. Also, don't make it the same on two different systems; it needs to be different anytime there are two different kernels running.

If you need to share /etc between two different kernels, a possible solution is to symlink the machine ID to /var, and run "dbus-uuidgen --ensure=/var/whatever" from an early boot script or the system message bus boot script.

OPTIONS
The following options are supported:

--get[=FILENAME]
    If a filename is not given, defaults to sysconfdir/dbus-1/machine-id (sysconfdir is usually /etc). If this file exists and is valid, the uuid in the file is printed on stdout. Otherwise, the command exits with a nonzero status.

--ensure[=FILENAME]
    If a filename is not given, defaults to sysconfdir/dbus-1/machine-id (sysconfdir is usually /etc). If this file exists then it will be validated, and a failure code returned if it contains the wrong thing. If the file does not exist, it will be created with a new uuid in it. On success, prints no output.

--version
    Print the version of dbus-uuidgen

AUTHOR
See http://www.freedesktop.org/software/dbus/doc/AUTHORS

BUGS
Please send bug reports to the D-Bus mailing list or bug tracker, see http://www.freedesktop.org/software/dbus/