debian man page for uuidgen

UUIDGEN(1)							   User Commands							UUIDGEN(1)

NAME
       uuidgen - create a new UUID value

SYNOPSIS
       uuidgen [options]

DESCRIPTION
       The uuidgen program creates (and prints) a new universally unique identifier (UUID) using the libuuid(3) library.  The new UUID can reason-
       ably be considered unique among all UUIDs created on the local system, and among UUIDs created on other systems in  the	past  and  in  the
       future.

       There  are two types of UUIDs which uuidgen can generate: time-based UUIDs and random-based UUIDs.  By default uuidgen will generate a ran-
       dom-based UUID if a high-quality random number generator is present.  Otherwise, it will choose a time-based UUID.  It is possible to force
       the generation of one of these two UUID types by using the -r or -t options.

OPTIONS
       -r, --random
	      Generate	a  random-based UUID.  This method creates a UUID consisting mostly of random bits.  It requires that the operating system
	      have a high quality random number generator, such as /dev/random.

       -t, --time
	      Generate a time-based UUID.  This method creates a UUID based on the system clock plus the system's ethernet  hardware  address,	if
	      present.

       -h, --help
	      Display help text and exit.

       -V, --version
	      Display version information and exit.

CONFORMING TO
       OSF DCE 1.1

AUTHOR
       uuidgen was written by Andreas Dilger for libuuid.

AVAILABILITY
       The uuidgen command is part of the util-linux package and is available from ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/.

SEE ALSO
       libuuid(3)

util-linux							     June 2011								UUIDGEN(1)