UUIDGEN(1) User Commands UUIDGEN(1)
NAME
uuidgen - create a new UUID value
SYNOPSIS
uuidgen [options]
DESCRIPTION
The uuidgen program creates (and prints) a new universally unique iden-
tifier (UUID) using the libuuid(3) library. The new UUID can reason-
ably be considered unique among all UUIDs created on the local system,
and among UUIDs created on other systems in the past and in the future.
There are two types of UUIDs which uuidgen can generate: time-based
UUIDs and random-based UUIDs. By default uuidgen will generate a ran-
dom-based UUID if a high-quality random number generator is present.
Otherwise, it will choose a time-based UUID. It is possible to force
the generation of one of these two UUID types by using the -r or -t
options.
OPTIONS
-r, --random
Generate a random-based UUID. This method creates a UUID con-
sisting mostly of random bits. It requires that the operating
system have a high quality random number generator, such as
/dev/random.
-t, --time
Generate a time-based UUID. This method creates a UUID based on
the system clock plus the system's ethernet hardware address, if
present.
-h, --help
Display help text and exit.
-V, --version
Display version information and exit.
CONFORMING TO
OSF DCE 1.1
AUTHOR
uuidgen was written by Andreas Dilger for libuuid.
SEE ALSO
libuuid(3)
AVAILABILITY
The uuidgen command is part of the util-linux package and is available
from ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/.
util-linux June 2011 UUIDGEN(1)