[Techtalk] When might I use 'hostid'?

[Carlo Hamalainen]

>What is this command for? When would I need to use it? Is it a
>"handy for shell scripts when put within back-ticks" thing?

>From one man page (http://www.mcsr.olemiss.edu/cgi-bin/man-cgi?hostid+1)
we glean that the hostid program is designed to return a unique identifier
for a host, in HEX. Usually this is just the machine's IP address but
doesn't have to be.

Why use it? Things like FLEXlm (a licensing program used by programs like
Matlab) may want a unique identifier for your computer, so that you can be
given a unique and non-copyable serial number.

Beyond that, I don't think it would be very useful for personal scripting
things. In those cases the IP address serves perfectly well as a unique
identifier.

[Hope this helps ]

-- Carlo