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UUIDGEN(2) System Calls Manual UUIDGEN(2) NAME uuidgen -- generate universally unique identifiers LIBRARY Standard C Library (libc, -lc) SYNOPSIS #include <sys/uuid.h> int uuidgen(struct uuid *store, int count); DESCRIPTION The uuidgen() system call generates count universally unique identifiers (UUIDs) and writes them to the buffer pointed to by store. The identifiers are generated according to the syntax and semantics of the DCE version 1 variant of universally unique identifiers. See below for a more in-depth description of the identifiers. When no IEEE 802 address is available for the node field, a random multicast address is generated for each invocation of the system call. According to the algorithm of generating time-based UUIDs, this will also force a new random clock sequence, thereby increasing the likelihood for the identifier to be unique. When multiple identifiers are to be generated, the uuidgen() system call will generate a set of identifiers that is dense in such a way that there is no identifier that is larger than the smallest identifier in the set and smaller than the largest identifier in the set and that is not already in the set. Universally unique identifiers, also known as globally unique identifiers (GUIDs), have a binary representation of 128-bits. The grouping and mean- ing of these bits is described by the following structure and its descrip- tion of the fields that follow it: struct uuid { uint32_t time_low; uint16_t time_mid; uint16_t time_hi_and_version; uint8_t clock_seq_hi_and_reserved; uint8_t clock_seq_low; uint8_t node[_UUID_NODE_LEN]; }; time_low The least significant 32 bits of a 60-bit time- stamp. This field is stored in the native byte- order. time_mid The least significant 16 bits of the most sig- nificant 28 bits of the 60-bit timestamp. This field is stored in the native byte-order. time_hi_and_version The most significant 12 bits of the 60-bit time- stamp multiplexed with a 4-bit version number. The version number is stored in the most signif- icant 4 bits of the 16-bit field. This field is stored in the native byte-order. clock_seq_hi_and_reserved The most significant 6 bits of a 14-bit sequence number multiplexed with a 2-bit variant value. Note that the width of the variant value is de- termined by the variant itself. Identifiers generated by the uuidgen() system call have variant value 10b. the variant value is stored in the most significant bits of the field. clock_seq_low The least significant 8 bits of a 14-bit se- quence number. node The 6-byte IEEE 802 (MAC) address of one of the interfaces of the node. If no such interface exists, a random multi-cast address is used in- stead. The binary representation is sensitive to byte ordering. Any multi-byte field is to be stored in the local or native byte-order and identifiers must be converted when transmitted to hosts that do not agree on the byte- order. The specification does not however document what this means in con- crete terms and is otherwise beyond the scope of this system call. RETURN VALUES Upon successful completion, the value 0 is returned; otherwise the value -1 is returned and the global variable errno is set to indicate the error. ERRORS The uuidgen() system call can fail with: [EFAULT] The buffer pointed to by store could not be written to for any or all identifiers. [EINVAL] The count argument is less than 1 or larger than the hard upper limit of 2048. SEE ALSO uuidgen(1), uuid(3) STANDARDS The identifiers are represented and generated in conformance with the DCE 1.1 RPC specification. The uuidgen() system call is itself not part of the specification. HISTORY The uuidgen() system call first appeared in FreeBSD 5.0. FreeBSD ports 15.quarterly May 26, 2002 UUIDGEN(2)
NAME | LIBRARY | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | RETURN VALUES | ERRORS | SEE ALSO | STANDARDS | HISTORY
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