I have a system whose server runs on linux and clients run on windows currently. I would very much like to port the client over to linux, but the current system uses MAC address, hostname, and volume serial number to authenticate stations. Is there an equivalent value in linux for volume serial number, or something else that is equally unique per-machine that would be useful for authentication, and could easily be hashed down to a 32-bit number? I've been searching google and this forum for over an hour and have found nothing useful. I found reference to an entry in /proc and another reference to using hdparm, but hdparm fails on my server, probably because it is for ide/ata drives, and the /proc entry does not exist on my server. I'm really hoping someone here knows something, because this is really holding me up in my efforts to develop a linux port of my client.
