dear Karl, On Fri, 08 Mar 2019, k...@aspodata.se wrote:
> Jaromil: > > any thoughts about this new systemd-made thing that freedesktop > > immediately "standardized" (whatever is their procedure for that, > > likely smoking cigars among old-boys or so) > > https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/machine-id.html > ... > > . It doesn't say "why". > Why should I (we) provide a means to uniquely identify my systems ? > I don't need it. Is it for > - the nice though not useful concept, yes we reinvent things you know > - the ongoing trend for more surveillance from the authorities > - the ongoing trend for more surveillance from the advertising firms > - the ongoing trend for more surveillance for "copyright" reason > > . It says "This ID uniquely identifies the host." > - on the lan I can just as well use hostname or the primary ip-number > - on the internet I use the fqdn or the ip-number > The uniqness part will fail without someone guarantying the uniqness. > Do we have an "IEEE handling out oui's" - for machine-id's ? > Even if there were some IEEE, pci- or usb-consortium handling out vendor > parts of the id's, there is no guaranty for uniqness since that > number is just what's the local admin fancies, or is it for > "tamperproof" hardware, something oppressive regimes would like. > And I have seen pci cards with the wrong vendor part: "the programmer > left and we don't have the code so we cannot change it" as the vendor > put it. > > > AFAIK chromium started checking it and its absence on Devuan Beowulf > > is reported as an error, so we may have to work around this. > > Isn't that a bug, the above man page says: > It should be considered "confidential", and must not be exposed in > untrusted environments, in particular on the network. > Why would a network centric program need this unless it wants to > expose it ? > > > but first things first: do we want /etc/machine-id? and how? > > In my view it falls in the completely unnessesary or the potentially > dangerous group. > > I don't want it. while I'm still catching up with reading all the thread, I think you make a concise and straight to the point argument with which I wholeheartedly agree. Thanks, to you and all others providing insights on this issue. I also don't want it and I think having such a machine-id is not just a technical, but also a political decision, as you pointed out. for the record, my /etc/machine-id follows: "d34dc0d3d34dc0d3d34dc0d3d34dc0d3" ciao -- Denis "Jaromil" Roio https://Dyne.org think &do tank Ph.D, CTO & co-founder software to empower communities ✉ Haparandadam 7-A1, 1013AK Amsterdam, The Netherlands ✩ Profile and publications: https://jaromil.dyne.org 𝄞 crypto κρυπτο крипто गुप्त् 加密 האנוסים المشفره ⚷ 6113D89C A825C5CE DD02C872 73B35DA5 4ACB7D10 _______________________________________________ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
