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+<?xml version='1.0'?> <!--*-nxml-*-->
+<!DOCTYPE refentry PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.2//EN"
+ "http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.2/docbookx.dtd">
+
+<!--
+ SPDX-License-Identifier: LGPL-2.1+
+-->
+
+<refentry id="machine-id">
+ <refentryinfo>
+ <title>machine-id</title>
+ <productname>systemd</productname>
+ </refentryinfo>
+
+ <refmeta>
+ <refentrytitle>machine-id</refentrytitle>
+ <manvolnum>5</manvolnum>
+ </refmeta>
+
+ <refnamediv>
+ <refname>machine-id</refname>
+ <refpurpose>Local machine ID configuration file</refpurpose>
+ </refnamediv>
+
+ <refsynopsisdiv>
+ <para><filename>/etc/machine-id</filename></para>
+ </refsynopsisdiv>
+
+ <refsect1>
+ <title>Description</title>
+
+ <para>The <filename>/etc/machine-id</filename> file contains the unique machine ID of
+ the local system that is set during installation or boot. The machine ID is a single
+ newline-terminated, hexadecimal, 32-character, lowercase ID. When decoded from
+ hexadecimal, this corresponds to a 16-byte/128-bit value. This ID may not be all
+ zeros.</para>
+
+ <para>The machine ID is usually generated from a random source during system
+ installation or first boot and stays constant for all subsequent boots. Optionally,
+ for stateless systems, it is generated during runtime during early boot if necessary.
+ </para>
+
+ <para>The machine ID may be set, for example when network booting, with the
+ <varname>systemd.machine_id=</varname> kernel command line parameter or by passing the
+ option <option>--machine-id=</option> to systemd. An ID is specified in this manner
+ has higher priority and will be used instead of the ID stored in
+ <filename>/etc/machine-id</filename>.</para>
+
+ <para>The machine ID does not change based on local or network configuration or when
+ hardware is replaced. Due to this and its greater length, it is a more useful
+ replacement for the
+ <citerefentry project='man-pages'><refentrytitle>gethostid</refentrytitle><manvolnum>3</manvolnum></citerefentry>
+ call that POSIX specifies.</para>
+
+ <para>This machine ID adheres to the same format and logic as the
+ D-Bus machine ID.</para>
+
+ <para>This ID uniquely identifies the host. It should be considered "confidential", and must not be exposed in
+ untrusted environments, in particular on the network. If a stable unique identifier that is tied to the machine is
+ needed for some application, the machine ID or any part of it must not be used directly. Instead the machine ID
+ should be hashed with a cryptographic, keyed hash function, using a fixed, application-specific key. That way the
+ ID will be properly unique, and derived in a constant way from the machine ID but there will be no way to retrieve
+ the original machine ID from the application-specific one. The
+ <citerefentry><refentrytitle>sd_id128_get_machine_app_specific</refentrytitle><manvolnum>3</manvolnum></citerefentry>
+ API provides an implementation of such an algorithm.</para>
+ </refsect1>
+
+ <refsect1>
+ <title>Initialization</title>
+
+ <para>Each machine should have a non-empty ID in normal operation. The ID of each
+ machine should be unique. To achieve those objectives,
+ <filename>/etc/machine-id</filename> can be initialized in a few different ways.
+ </para>
+
+ <para>For normal operating system installations, where a custom image is created for a
+ specific machine, <filename>/etc/machine-id</filename> should be populated during
+ installation.</para>
+
+ <para>
+ <citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd-machine-id-setup</refentrytitle><manvolnum>1</manvolnum></citerefentry>
+ may be used by installer tools to initialize the machine ID at install time, but
+ <filename>/etc/machine-id</filename> may also be written using any other means.
+ </para>
+
+ <para>For operating system images which are created once and used on multiple
+ machines, for example for containers or in the cloud,
+ <filename>/etc/machine-id</filename> should be an empty file in the generic file
+ system image. An ID will be generated during boot and saved to this file if
+ possible. Having an empty file in place is useful because it allows a temporary file
+ to be bind-mounted over the real file, in case the image is used read-only.</para>
+
+ <para><citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd-firstboot</refentrytitle><manvolnum>1</manvolnum></citerefentry>
+ may be used to initialize <filename>/etc/machine-id</filename> on mounted (but not
+ booted) system images.</para>
+
+ <para>When a machine is booted with
+ <citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd</refentrytitle><manvolnum>1</manvolnum></citerefentry>
+ the ID of the machine will be established. If <varname>systemd.machine_id=</varname>
+ or <option>--machine-id=</option> options (see first section) are specified, this
+ value will be used. Otherwise, the value in <filename>/etc/machine-id</filename> will
+ be used. If this file is empty or missing, <filename>systemd</filename> will attempt
+ to use the D-Bus machine ID from <filename>/var/lib/dbus/machine-id</filename>, the
+ value of the kernel command line option <varname>container_uuid</varname>, the KVM DMI
+ <filename>product_uuid</filename> (on KVM systems), and finally a randomly generated
+ UUID.</para>
+
+ <para>After the machine ID is established,
+ <citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd</refentrytitle><manvolnum>1</manvolnum></citerefentry>
+ will attempt to save it to <filename>/etc/machine-id</filename>. If this fails, it
+ will attempt to bind-mount a temporary file over <filename>/etc/machine-id</filename>.
+ It is an error if the file system is read-only and does not contain a (possibly empty)
+ <filename>/etc/machine-id</filename> file.</para>
+
+ <para><citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd-machine-id-commit.service</refentrytitle><manvolnum>8</manvolnum></citerefentry>
+ will attempt to write the machine ID to the file system if
+ <filename>/etc/machine-id</filename> or <filename>/etc</filename> are read-only during
+ early boot but become writable later on.</para>
+ </refsect1>
+
+ <refsect1>
+ <title>Relation to OSF UUIDs</title>
+
+ <para>Note that the machine ID historically is not an OSF UUID as
+ defined by <ulink url="https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4122">RFC
+ 4122</ulink>, nor a Microsoft GUID; however, starting with systemd
+ v30, newly generated machine IDs do qualify as v4 UUIDs.</para>
+
+ <para>In order to maintain compatibility with existing
+ installations, an application requiring a UUID should decode the
+ machine ID, and then apply the following operations to turn it
+ into a valid OSF v4 UUID. With <literal>id</literal> being an
+ unsigned character array:</para>
+
+ <programlisting>/* Set UUID version to 4 --- truly random generation */
+id[6] = (id[6] &amp; 0x0F) | 0x40;
+/* Set the UUID variant to DCE */
+id[8] = (id[8] &amp; 0x3F) | 0x80;</programlisting>
+
+ <para>(This code is inspired by
+ <literal>generate_random_uuid()</literal> of
+ <filename>drivers/char/random.c</filename> from the Linux kernel
+ sources.)</para>
+
+ </refsect1>
+
+ <refsect1>
+ <title>History</title>
+
+ <para>The simple configuration file format of
+ <filename>/etc/machine-id</filename> originates in the
+ <filename>/var/lib/dbus/machine-id</filename> file introduced by
+ D-Bus. In fact, this latter file might be a symlink to
+ <filename>/etc/machine-id</filename>.</para>
+ </refsect1>
+
+ <refsect1>
+ <title>See Also</title>
+ <para>
+ <citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd</refentrytitle><manvolnum>1</manvolnum></citerefentry>,
+ <citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd-machine-id-setup</refentrytitle><manvolnum>1</manvolnum></citerefentry>,
+ <citerefentry project='man-pages'><refentrytitle>gethostid</refentrytitle><manvolnum>3</manvolnum></citerefentry>,
+ <citerefentry><refentrytitle>hostname</refentrytitle><manvolnum>5</manvolnum></citerefentry>,
+ <citerefentry><refentrytitle>machine-info</refentrytitle><manvolnum>5</manvolnum></citerefentry>,
+ <citerefentry><refentrytitle>os-release</refentrytitle><manvolnum>5</manvolnum></citerefentry>,
+ <citerefentry><refentrytitle>sd-id128</refentrytitle><manvolnum>3</manvolnum></citerefentry>,
+ <citerefentry><refentrytitle>sd_id128_get_machine</refentrytitle><manvolnum>3</manvolnum></citerefentry>,
+ <citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd-firstboot</refentrytitle><manvolnum>1</manvolnum></citerefentry>
+ </para>
+ </refsect1>
+
+</refentry>