Back to main site | Back to man page index

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 identifier (UUID) using the libuuid(3)
       library.  The new UUID can reasonably 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 random-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  consisting  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.ker‐
       nel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/.



util-linux                                            June 2011                                            UUIDGEN(1)