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d7ccca2e 1<?xml version='1.0'?> <!--*-nxml-*-->
3a54a157 2<!DOCTYPE refentry PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.5//EN"
12b42c76 3 "http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.2/docbookx.dtd">
0307f791 4<!-- SPDX-License-Identifier: LGPL-2.1+ -->
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5
6<refentry id="machine-id">
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7 <refentryinfo>
8 <title>machine-id</title>
9 <productname>systemd</productname>
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10 </refentryinfo>
11
12 <refmeta>
13 <refentrytitle>machine-id</refentrytitle>
14 <manvolnum>5</manvolnum>
15 </refmeta>
16
17 <refnamediv>
18 <refname>machine-id</refname>
19 <refpurpose>Local machine ID configuration file</refpurpose>
20 </refnamediv>
21
22 <refsynopsisdiv>
23 <para><filename>/etc/machine-id</filename></para>
24 </refsynopsisdiv>
25
26 <refsect1>
27 <title>Description</title>
28
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29 <para>The <filename>/etc/machine-id</filename> file contains the unique machine ID of
30 the local system that is set during installation or boot. The machine ID is a single
31 newline-terminated, hexadecimal, 32-character, lowercase ID. When decoded from
32 hexadecimal, this corresponds to a 16-byte/128-bit value. This ID may not be all
33 zeros.</para>
34
35 <para>The machine ID is usually generated from a random source during system
36 installation or first boot and stays constant for all subsequent boots. Optionally,
37 for stateless systems, it is generated during runtime during early boot if necessary.
38 </para>
39
40 <para>The machine ID may be set, for example when network booting, with the
41 <varname>systemd.machine_id=</varname> kernel command line parameter or by passing the
42 option <option>--machine-id=</option> to systemd. An ID is specified in this manner
43 has higher priority and will be used instead of the ID stored in
44 <filename>/etc/machine-id</filename>.</para>
45
46 <para>The machine ID does not change based on local or network configuration or when
47 hardware is replaced. Due to this and its greater length, it is a more useful
48 replacement for the
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49 <citerefentry project='man-pages'><refentrytitle>gethostid</refentrytitle><manvolnum>3</manvolnum></citerefentry>
50 call that POSIX specifies.</para>
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51
52 <para>This machine ID adheres to the same format and logic as the
53 D-Bus machine ID.</para>
54
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55 <para>This ID uniquely identifies the host. It should be considered "confidential", and must not be exposed in
56 untrusted environments, in particular on the network. If a stable unique identifier that is tied to the machine is
57 needed for some application, the machine ID or any part of it must not be used directly. Instead the machine ID
58 should be hashed with a cryptographic, keyed hash function, using a fixed, application-specific key. That way the
59 ID will be properly unique, and derived in a constant way from the machine ID but there will be no way to retrieve
60 the original machine ID from the application-specific one. The
61 <citerefentry><refentrytitle>sd_id128_get_machine_app_specific</refentrytitle><manvolnum>3</manvolnum></citerefentry>
62 API provides an implementation of such an algorithm.</para>
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63 </refsect1>
64
65 <refsect1>
66 <title>Initialization</title>
67
68 <para>Each machine should have a non-empty ID in normal operation. The ID of each
1b2ad5d9 69 machine should be unique. To achieve those objectives,
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70 <filename>/etc/machine-id</filename> can be initialized in a few different ways.
71 </para>
72
73 <para>For normal operating system installations, where a custom image is created for a
74 specific machine, <filename>/etc/machine-id</filename> should be populated during
75 installation.</para>
798d3a52 76
74a79c65 77 <para>
798d3a52 78 <citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd-machine-id-setup</refentrytitle><manvolnum>1</manvolnum></citerefentry>
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79 may be used by installer tools to initialize the machine ID at install time, but
80 <filename>/etc/machine-id</filename> may also be written using any other means.
81 </para>
82
83 <para>For operating system images which are created once and used on multiple
84 machines, for example for containers or in the cloud,
85 <filename>/etc/machine-id</filename> should be an empty file in the generic file
86 system image. An ID will be generated during boot and saved to this file if
87 possible. Having an empty file in place is useful because it allows a temporary file
88 to be bind-mounted over the real file, in case the image is used read-only.</para>
89
90 <para><citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd-firstboot</refentrytitle><manvolnum>1</manvolnum></citerefentry>
1b2ad5d9 91 may be used to initialize <filename>/etc/machine-id</filename> on mounted (but not
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92 booted) system images.</para>
93
94 <para>When a machine is booted with
95 <citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd</refentrytitle><manvolnum>1</manvolnum></citerefentry>
96 the ID of the machine will be established. If <varname>systemd.machine_id=</varname>
97 or <option>--machine-id=</option> options (see first section) are specified, this
98 value will be used. Otherwise, the value in <filename>/etc/machine-id</filename> will
99 be used. If this file is empty or missing, <filename>systemd</filename> will attempt
100 to use the D-Bus machine ID from <filename>/var/lib/dbus/machine-id</filename>, the
101 value of the kernel command line option <varname>container_uuid</varname>, the KVM DMI
102 <filename>product_uuid</filename> (on KVM systems), and finally a randomly generated
103 UUID.</para>
104
105 <para>After the machine ID is established,
106 <citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd</refentrytitle><manvolnum>1</manvolnum></citerefentry>
107 will attempt to save it to <filename>/etc/machine-id</filename>. If this fails, it
108 will attempt to bind-mount a temporary file over <filename>/etc/machine-id</filename>.
109 It is an error if the file system is read-only and does not contain a (possibly empty)
110 <filename>/etc/machine-id</filename> file.</para>
111
112 <para><citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd-machine-id-commit.service</refentrytitle><manvolnum>8</manvolnum></citerefentry>
113 will attempt to write the machine ID to the file system if
114 <filename>/etc/machine-id</filename> or <filename>/etc</filename> are read-only during
115 early boot but become writable later on.</para>
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116 </refsect1>
117
118 <refsect1>
119 <title>Relation to OSF UUIDs</title>
120
121 <para>Note that the machine ID historically is not an OSF UUID as
122 defined by <ulink url="https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4122">RFC
123 4122</ulink>, nor a Microsoft GUID; however, starting with systemd
124 v30, newly generated machine IDs do qualify as v4 UUIDs.</para>
125
126 <para>In order to maintain compatibility with existing
127 installations, an application requiring a UUID should decode the
128 machine ID, and then apply the following operations to turn it
129 into a valid OSF v4 UUID. With <literal>id</literal> being an
130 unsigned character array:</para>
131
132 <programlisting>/* Set UUID version to 4 --- truly random generation */
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133id[6] = (id[6] &amp; 0x0F) | 0x40;
134/* Set the UUID variant to DCE */
135id[8] = (id[8] &amp; 0x3F) | 0x80;</programlisting>
136
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137 <para>(This code is inspired by
138 <literal>generate_random_uuid()</literal> of
139 <filename>drivers/char/random.c</filename> from the Linux kernel
140 sources.)</para>
141
142 </refsect1>
143
144 <refsect1>
145 <title>History</title>
146
147 <para>The simple configuration file format of
148 <filename>/etc/machine-id</filename> originates in the
149 <filename>/var/lib/dbus/machine-id</filename> file introduced by
150 D-Bus. In fact, this latter file might be a symlink to
22065311 151 <filename>/etc/machine-id</filename>.</para>
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152 </refsect1>
153
154 <refsect1>
155 <title>See Also</title>
156 <para>
157 <citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd</refentrytitle><manvolnum>1</manvolnum></citerefentry>,
158 <citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd-machine-id-setup</refentrytitle><manvolnum>1</manvolnum></citerefentry>,
3ba3a79d 159 <citerefentry project='man-pages'><refentrytitle>gethostid</refentrytitle><manvolnum>3</manvolnum></citerefentry>,
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160 <citerefentry><refentrytitle>hostname</refentrytitle><manvolnum>5</manvolnum></citerefentry>,
161 <citerefentry><refentrytitle>machine-info</refentrytitle><manvolnum>5</manvolnum></citerefentry>,
162 <citerefentry><refentrytitle>os-release</refentrytitle><manvolnum>5</manvolnum></citerefentry>,
163 <citerefentry><refentrytitle>sd-id128</refentrytitle><manvolnum>3</manvolnum></citerefentry>,
164 <citerefentry><refentrytitle>sd_id128_get_machine</refentrytitle><manvolnum>3</manvolnum></citerefentry>,
165 <citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd-firstboot</refentrytitle><manvolnum>1</manvolnum></citerefentry>
166 </para>
167 </refsect1>
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168
169</refentry>