gethostid(3) — Linux manual page

NAME | LIBRARY | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | RETURN VALUE | ERRORS | ATTRIBUTES | VERSIONS | STANDARDS | HISTORY | BUGS | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

gethostid(3)            Library Functions Manual            gethostid(3)

NAME         top

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

LIBRARY         top

       Standard C library (libc, -lc)

SYNOPSIS         top

       #include <unistd.h>

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

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

       gethostid():
           Since glibc 2.20:
               _DEFAULT_SOURCE || _XOPEN_SOURCE >= 500
           Up to and including glibc 2.19:
               _BSD_SOURCE || _XOPEN_SOURCE >= 500

       sethostid():
           Since glibc 2.21:
               _DEFAULT_SOURCE
           In glibc 2.19 and 2.20:
               _DEFAULT_SOURCE || (_XOPEN_SOURCE && _XOPEN_SOURCE < 500)
           Up to and including glibc 2.19:
               _BSD_SOURCE || (_XOPEN_SOURCE && _XOPEN_SOURCE < 500)

DESCRIPTION         top

       gethostid() and sethostid() respectively get or set a unique
       32-bit identifier for the current machine.  The 32-bit identifier
       was 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         top

       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         top

       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         top

       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          │
       └─────────────┴───────────────┴─────────────────────────────────┘

VERSIONS         top

       In the glibc implementation, the hostid is stored in the file
       /etc/hostid.  (Before glibc 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.)

STANDARDS         top

       gethostid()
              POSIX.1-2008.

       sethostid()
              None.

HISTORY         top

       4.2BSD; dropped in 4.4BSD.  SVr4 and POSIX.1-2001 include
       gethostid() but not sethostid().

BUGS         top

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

SEE ALSO         top

       hostid(1), gethostbyname(3)

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the man-pages (Linux kernel and C library
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       ⟨https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/docs/man-pages/man-pages.git/tree/CONTRIBUTING⟩.
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       [email protected]

Linux man-pages 6.9.1          2024-05-02                   gethostid(3)

Pages that refer to this page: hostid(1)machine-id(5)attributes(7)