[geeks] generating unique systemids

[William Kirkland]

They have never served a viable purpose other than ensuring I am not  
a thief, for me.

On Aug 29, 2007, at 11:49 PDT, geeks-request at sunhelp.org wrote:

Message: 6
Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2007 13:22:47 -0400
From: Charles Shannon Hendrix <shannon at widomaker.com>
Subject: Re: [geeks] generating unique systemids
To: geeks at sunhelp.org
Message-ID: <20070829132247.3c8cbeef at daydream>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII

On Tue, 28 Aug 2007 23:07:36 -0500
Brian Dunbar <brian.dunbar at liftport.com> wrote:

> Doug McLaren wrote:
>> On Mon, Aug 27, 2007 at 02:57:00PM -0400, Dave K wrote:
>>
>> | On 8/27/07, Charles Shannon Hendrix <shannon at widomaker.com> wrote:
>> | > Does anyone know a decent way to generate a unique system ID
>> | > for a PC server running FreeBSD?
>> |
>> | First thought that popped into mind:
>> |
>> | MAC Address of the primary interface?
>>
>> That is the answer used by most commercial software that creates and
>> uses system IDs for licensing purposes.
>>
>> Of course, the problems tend to be --
>>
>>   -- which interface is the primary?  You might think you know, but
>>      often you just don't, or the smallest system change will change
>>      the order of the interfaces.
>>
>>   -- MAC IDs are easy to change.
>
> At some point you have to trust your customers.
>
> Being treated as a thief is a huge turn-off.  One of our vendors  
> insists
> on putting their keys on a USB dongle because with a software key we
> could (potentially) install a new server and not pay for it.

Licenses are not just used to keep a customer from being a thief.

They are also used to make sure that a customer gets the right  
software when
they do upgrades, etc.

Don't assume that every use of a license is anti-customer.



-- 
shannon / Asus A8N5X - Opteron 170 at 2.5GHz | But you know, a little  
Sun Ultra 1
-------'  2GB RAM - nVidia 7900GS         | is doing all the hard  
work...


--
bill.kirkland at gmail.com