dbus-uuidgen(1) 					      General Commands Manual						   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.

       Note  that  the D-Bus UUID has no relationship to RFC 4122 and does not generate UUIDs compatible with that spec. Many systems have a sepa-
       rate command for that (often called "uuidgen").

       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 /var/lib/dbus/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 run-
       ning 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.

       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.

       If  you try to change an existing 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.

       The UUID should be different on two different virtual machines, because there are two different kernels.

OPTIONS

       The following options are supported:

       --get[=FILENAME]
	      If a filename is not given, defaults to localstatedir/lib/dbus/machine-id (localstatedir is usually /var). 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 localstatedir/lib/dbus/machine-id (localstatedir is usually /var). 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/

																   dbus-uuidgen(1)