Equivalent to volume serial number in linux

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.

There's "scsi_id" for non-ata drives...

gg

Is it really appropriate to authenticate clients with host characteristics? What sort of system is this where the user doesn't matter in the authentication process?

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Originally Posted by brewbuck

What sort of system is this where the user doesn't matter in the authentication process?

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the user matters, but the station is also important. different stations have different devices (bill acceptors, receipt printers, credit card readers, etc.) installed, some of which require that a persistent state be stored on the server, which demands that the server be able to positively identify which station it is talking to.

as a workaround, I get the output of "uname -a" and hash it down to a 32-bit quantity and use that. it is not quite as unique as a volume serial number, but at least it doesn't change over time without a change of kernel.

Newer Linux distributions allow you to mount drive partitions by "volume ID" -- these IDs will be visible in the /etc/fstab file. You might try checking there.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by brewbuck

Newer Linux distributions allow you to mount drive partitions by "volume ID" -- these IDs will be visible in the /etc/fstab file. You might try checking there.

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no such luck in this case. can you think of any other data that I can readily get from the system that is as unique as a volume serial number, aside from hostname and MAC?

You could do several things when you first run the program, and store the results in a file somewhere.

- the 32-bit time of when the program was run.
- the 32-bit value composed of the pid() and parent pid() of the registration task.
- the 32-bit uptime at that moment.

Or just use a uuid generator
uuid_generate(3): create new unique UUID value - Linux man page

Code:

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sudo vol_id --uuid /dev/sda1

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?

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Originally Posted by cyberfish

Code:

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sudo vol_id --uuid /dev/sda1

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?

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I downloaded and installed the rpm package for that program, and it seems to work, and may be exactly what the doctor ordered.