Eric, I did some poking around, but exactly what value gets used to generate the hostid is unclear for any particular system. The man page for gethostid/sethostid says "Get or set a unique 32-bit identifier for the current machine. The 32-bit identifier is intended to be unique among all UNIX systems in existence. This normally resembles the Internet address for the local machine, as returned by gethostby-name(3), and thus usually never needs to be set."
But, when I look on my systems, the values aren't even close to the IP address. Other places I've looked indicated that the value could be some kind of hash of the hostname itself. Others, well... In any case, it's supposed to be unique, which means that it probably isn't if you really need it to be. :) Mark Post -----Original Message----- From: Eric Lawler [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, March 27, 2002 7:09 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Hostid Value. Hello, We currently run Linux under VM (2.4.0) in LPAR on S390 G6 processor. When we issue 'HOSTID - V' cmd we get a hex and a decimal value returned. Can anyone tell us what this value means or is taken from ? We use virtual ctcs from Linux virtual machines to an OS390 gateway TCPIP stack and we do not have a mac address which Linux running on an Intel for example returns as the Hostid value. See example below of cmd issued on Linux in a virtual machine.:- hostid -v Hostid is 134881268 (0x80a1ff4) Thanks, Eric Lawler. Eric Lawler, Infrastructure Support (Platforms), Barclays Enable, Ground Floor (A7), Block 10, Radbroke Hall, WA16 9EU (M). Phone: 7-2000-3729 (Internal) +44 (0)1565 613729 (External) Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Internet communications are not secure and therefore the Barclays Group does not accept legal responsibility for the contents of this message. Although the Barclays Group operates anti-virus programmes, it does not accept responsibility for any damage whatsoever that is caused by viruses being passed. Any views or opinions presented are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the Barclays Group. Replies to this email may be monitored by the Barclays Group for operational or business reasons.
