WANTED: ethernet address or other unique ID

[Marcus J. Ranum]

In article <747 at utrcu1.UUCP> emmerik at utrcu1.UUCP (Emmerik P.J.L. van) writes:
>
>Wanted: a way of obtaining a unique identifier for a SUN-workstation
>        from a program.
>
>On some systems we use the ethernet address of a workstation as a unique
>identifier

	The Sun has a unique host id#, unless I'm mistaken. Take a look
at the man page on "hostid" or something like that.

	Using the ethernet address as a unique identifier is questionably
unique, since it can be changed with ioctl()s on some machines (which is
what DECnet does). At least it guarantees that only one machine at a time
on a local network will use that number, though.

mjr.
-- 
	I'd trade all the CASE tools in the world for one real
programmer.     [From the programming notebooks of a heretic, 1990]