On Fri, Jun 25, 1999 at 12:01:25AM -0700, Jason Thorpe wrote:
> On Thu, 24 Jun 1999 23:41:34 -0700 (PDT) 
>  Matthew Jacob <mjacob@feral.com> wrote:
> 
>  > More generally a system unique identifier available early (pre mountroot)
>  > could be useful for a number of things. Why're you asking?
> 
> The intended usage:
> 
> 	(1) Could influence where it is stored.
> 
> 	(2) Might be utterly useless (e.g. for software licensing,
> 	    especially when you have the source for the OS, and
> 	    can thus make it anything you want with a simple
> 	    kernel hack...)
> 
This makes a good case for providing it (being able to counterfeit it),
although it does not give any hint as to where such a serial number would
be held.

My two cents' worth says it should be an arbitrary length string, stored
as hexadecimal digits, in the kernel configuration file and propagated to
the kernel.  Or, at least, I could think of a few instances where such a
string may be useful.

Oh, yes, and a sysctl entry to alter it :-)

++L