boardid
This program looks up a device-specific serial number and prints it. The original use was to provide some non-changing and unique material for dynamically creating device names on a local LAN.
Supported boards:
- Raspberry Pi (all varieties)
- Beaglebone Black
- Lego EV3
- LinkIt Smart 7688
- Next Thing Co - C.H.I.P.
If your board isn't listed above, it may be supported via one of the generic mechanisms:
- Reading a serial number from
/proc/cpuinfo - Reading the MAC address of
eth0 - Reading bytes from a file
If your board isn't supported, please consider sending a pull request.
Building
Run make. To run the unit tests, run make check.
Usage
Usage: boardid [OPTION]...
Options:
-b <board/method> Use the specified board or detection method for
reading the ID.
-f <path> The file to read for the 'binfile' method
-k <offset> The offset in bytes for the 'binfile' method
-l <count> The number of bytes to read for the 'binfile' method
-n <count> Print out count characters (least significant ones)
-r <prefix> Root directory prefix (used for unit tests)
-v Print out the program version
Supported boards/methods:
rpi Raspberry Pi (all models)
ev3 Lego EV3
chip Next Thing Co - C.H.I.P.
cpuinfo Read /proc/cpuinfo
bbb Beaglebone Black
linkit LinkIt Smart (WLAN MAC address)
macaddr Read eth0's MAC address
binfile Read '-l' bytes from the file '-f' at offset '-k'
Without the -b option, boardid will try each method of determining an ID
until one works.
Example
Here's an example run on a Lego Mindstorms EV3 brick running ev3dev:
robot@ev3dev:~$ boardid
00000016534b129d
robot@ev3dev:~$
Caveats
This utility doesn't provide any assurance of the uniqueness of returned IDs. It is not unheard of for board manufacturers to accidentally reuse IDs or forget to program them entirely. Additionally, these IDs may even be guessible so using them in a cryptographic sense is not advised without an understanding for how they're assigned.