File /etc/machine-id not found. Pros/Cons ?
 

Hi all,

I came across something that I haven't ever needed, it's a file named: /etc/machine-id.
I see why it might be needed. So a couple of questions:
Firstly, I'm curious as to why it's not created on Slackware in /etc/machine-id during install (I like that this is the default, actually). And, secondly, what are the pros/cons of creating it manually, if needed?

I've used Slackware (currently 15.0) for many years and I'm pretty sure it's never been part of the install but I could be wrong, as I've never had a reason to use machine-id or go looking for it :)

Any comments, advice would be greatly appreciated.

TIA

-- St Brian's Epistle to the Slackers, v32

/etc/rc.d/rc.messagebus runs dbus-uuidgen --ensure which ensures that /var/lib/dbus/machine-id exists and has the uuid in it.

You can make a link to /etc/machine-id:
A program needed it but I don't remember which one.

Thanks everyone for responding! @Petri you are correct the file does indeed exist on my machine. Thank you that info. @BrianL lol I understand, point taken.

I was curious about this text in the doc referenced by Didier in particular - It "must" not be used "directly". Instead ...


"This ID uniquely identifies the host. It should be considered "confidential", and must not be exposed in untrusted environments, in particular on the network. If a stable unique identifier that is tied to the machine is needed for some application, the machine ID or any part of it must not be used directly. Instead the machine ID should be hashed with a cryptographic, keyed hash function, using a fixed, application-specific key. That way the ID will be properly unique, and derived in a constant way from the machine ID but there will be no way to retrieve the original machine ID from the application-specific one. "


Is *direct* application access to machine-id enforced by the system in anyway i.e. an application is only allowed access to the machine-id through sd_id128_get_machine* library calls or is it up to the application to do so but not required?

It's a way 'they' want to track you. Hopefully there's a way to randomize it on boot or whenever you want, or just put all zeroes or something.

Yeah, Bernie says a lot of stuff. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DtzwW0DWwAAQGPq.jpg

Microsoft Edge recently started to require it, and now maybe
Vivaldi

Who's using Microsoft Edge on Slackware? Sacrilege and blasphemy! "Bob" forgive them, they know not what they do.

Could it be Chrome, as installed by slackware64-15.0/extra/google-chrome/google-chrome.SlackBuild? Chrome complains
but runs anyway.

Microsoft Teams is a pervasive business platform, best accessed using Microsoft Edge.

My guess is the WebKit engine.

I have been experimenting with just some experimenting with rc.local_shutdown just replacing the content of /var/lib/dbus/machine-id via

uuidgen | tr -d '-' > /var/lib/dbus/machine-id

So far this does not seem to cause an issue. This might be a 'privacy enhanced' option for folks worried about it. It may be useful to have a globally unique machine identifier that isnt tied to any current network address for some applications for the life a user session.

It might be useful for that to persist beyond that but I think that should be clear choice presented user not a 'surprise' So I don't feel any remorse breaking the contract of the spec in this way. If that results in a broken application - well its probably not an application I want to be using.