> digging thru log files I found that flexlm was griping about a hostid
> mismatch. So I ran the hostid command and I got: a8c02203
>
> What the ????? I have rebooted several times and I keep getting the
> latter results (a8c02203). The only thing I added to the system between
> the problem was VMWare. I have removed the vm kernel modules and I get
> the same results (a8c02203).
>
> How does Linux determine its hostid? Does it use the MAC address?
Firstly it uses /var/adm/hostid which holds 4 bytes of raw data matching
the host ID in long format (ie low byte first).
You can generate this with something like
void main()
{
union
{
unsigned char h[4];
unsigned long id;
} hostid;
hostid.h[0]=0xA8;
hostid.h[1]=0xC0;
hostid.h[2]=0X22;
hostid.h[3]=0X03;
write(1, &hostid, 4);
}
and dumping the result in /var/adm/hostid
This might seem silly but since the PC has no hardware identitiy, ethernet
cards can be reprogrammed trivially and the kernel can be trivially tweaked
by a cracker to report a fake MAC address so it makes no odds.
The PIII does have a real serial number, but people like that even less.
Alan
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