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Mac OS X / Darwin man pages : gethostid (3)
gethostid (3)

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Name

gethostid, sethostid - get/set unique identifier of current host

Library

Standard C Library (libc, -lc)

Synopsis

#include <unistd.h>

long
gethostid(void);

void
sethostid(long hostid);

Description

The sethostid() function establishes a 32-bit identifier for the current processor that is intended to be unique among all UNIX systems in existence. This is normally a DARPA Internet address for the local machine. This call is allowed only to the super-user and is normally performed at boot time.

The gethostid() function returns the 32-bit identifier for the current processor.

This function has been deprecated. The hostid should be set or retrieved by use of sysctl(3) .

See Also

gethostname(3) , sysctl(3) , sysctl(8)

Bugs

32 bits for the identifier is too small.

History

The gethostid() and sethostid() syscalls appeared in 4.2BSD and were dropped in 4.4BSD.

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