On 3/1/07, Margot H. Miller <Margot.Miller at sun.com> wrote: > Unlike Sun's SPARC systems, X86 boxes do not have a unique hardware hostid. > Solaris generates a software identifier for X86 boxes during a Sun install > while > hostid is in NVRAM on SPARC systems. > > With Solaris now being open sourced and with many blogs explaining > X86 hostid generation (see the well written > blogs.sun.com/ambiguous/category/OpenSolaris) > as well as being able to use dtrace to change > the hostid, we were proposing replacing the current X86 implementation > of hostid with a much more simpler interface- still generating a hostid > on x86 via software (since there is no universal x86 hardware feature to > tie hostid to) and storing it in a an ascii file /etc/hostid. The > current implementation is pretty complex but is a not a secure mechanism.
Are you intending that the sparc implementation of hostid be unchanged? Why not use the same mechanism on all platforms? Why not simply use the hex form of the primary IP address? It's simple, unique, and used elsewhere. And it will be unique on a given network and stable if hardware is replaced. > Thinking about changing the underlying implementation of hostid on X86 > boxes has led to some interesting issues, that I would like to explore > more with the OpenSolaris community: > > - hostid was never meant to be used by third parties for licensing schemes. > How prevalent is the use of this for licensing? Pretty widespread, FLEXnet (FLEXlm) uses it, and that's used extensively. Legato Networker is tied to the hostid, which is a real pain. > - Besides the use of hostid for licensing, what other ways is it > being used by third parties? > > - What does hostid really mean? Is hostid a chassis identifier or just a > software installation instance identifier? I've always regarded it as a completely random number. > - Currently there is one hostid per box. Should we allow different hostids > for every Solaris zone on the same box? I don't see why not. Zones are supposed to be largely indistinguishable from regular system, and regular systems have different hostids, so why shouldn't every zone have a different hostid? -- -Peter Tribble http://www.petertribble.co.uk/ - http://ptribble.blogspot.com/
