NAME

       gethostid, sethostid - get or set the unique identifier of the current host

SYNOPSIS

       #include <unistd.h>

       long gethostid(void);
       int sethostid(long hostid);

   Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)):

       gethostid():
           _BSD_SOURCE || _XOPEN_SOURCE >= 500 || _XOPEN_SOURCE && _XOPEN_SOURCE_EXTENDED
       sethostid():
           _BSD_SOURCE || (_XOPEN_SOURCE && _XOPEN_SOURCE < 500)

DESCRIPTION

       gethostid()  and  sethostid()  respectively  get or set a unique 32-bit identifier for the
       current machine.  The 32-bit identifier is intended to be unique among all UNIX systems in
       existence.   This  normally  resembles  the  Internet  address  for  the local machine, as
       returned by gethostbyname(3), and thus usually never needs to be set.

       The sethostid() call is restricted to the superuser.

RETURN VALUE

       gethostid() returns the 32-bit identifier for the current host as set by sethostid().

       On success, sethostid() returns 0; on error, -1 is returned, and errno is set to  indicate
       the error.

ERRORS

       sethostid() can fail with the following errors:

       EACCES The caller did not have permission to write to the file used to store the host ID.

       EPERM  The  calling  process's  effective  user  or  group  ID  is  not  the  same  as its
              corresponding real ID.

ATTRIBUTES

       For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see attributes(7).

       ┌────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────────────────┐
       │Interface   │ Attribute     │ Value                     │
       ├────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────────────────┤
       │gethostid() │ Thread safety │ MT-Safe hostid env locale │
       ├────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────────────────┤
       │sethostid() │ Thread safety │ MT-Unsafe const:hostid    │
       └────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────────────────┘

CONFORMING TO

       4.2BSD; these functions were  dropped  in  4.4BSD.   SVr4  includes  gethostid()  but  not
       sethostid().

       POSIX.1-2001 and POSIX.1-2008 specify gethostid() but not sethostid().

NOTES

       In  the  glibc  implementation,  the  hostid is stored in the file /etc/hostid.  (In glibc
       versions before 2.2, the file /var/adm/hostid was used.)

       In the glibc implementation, if gethostid() cannot open the file containing the  host  ID,
       then   it   obtains   the   hostname   using   gethostname(2),  passes  that  hostname  to
       gethostbyname_r(3) in order to obtain  the  host's  IPv4  address,  and  returns  a  value
       obtained by bit-twiddling the IPv4 address.  (This value may not be unique.)

BUGS

       It is impossible to ensure that the identifier is globally unique.

SEE ALSO

       hostid(1), gethostbyname(3)

COLOPHON

       This  page  is  part of release 4.04 of the Linux man-pages project.  A description of the
       project, information about reporting bugs, and the latest version of  this  page,  can  be
       found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.