dbus-uuidgen

dbus-uuidgen

The dbus-uuidgen command generates a new, random, universally unique identifier (UUID) and prints it to standard output. UUIDs are 128-bit values that are intended to be unique across space and time. This utility is typically used to create unique machine IDs or session IDs for applications utilizing the D-Bus inter-process communication system.

dbus-uuidgen ensures a new and statistically unique identifier is generated on each execution. There are no command options, which makes the utility straightforward and easy to use within shell scripts and configuration files. The output can be used directly or stored for later retrieval, such as the machine-id file.

To generate a new UUID and display it, simply run dbus-uuidgen in the terminal. The output will be a string representation of the UUID.

Many systemd-based distributions use a machine-id to uniquely identify a system. This ID is stored in /etc/machine-id. dbus-uuidgen is often used to generate this ID during system setup.

uuidgen(1)