xref: /freebsd/lib/libsys/uuidgen.2 (revision 8269e7673cf033aba67dab8264fe719920c70f87)

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.Dd May 26, 2002
.Dt UUIDGEN 2
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm uuidgen
.Nd generate universally unique identifiers
.Sh LIBRARY
.Lb libc
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.In sys/uuid.h
.Ft int
.Fn uuidgen "struct uuid *store" "int count"
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The
.Fn uuidgen
system call generates
.Fa count
universally unique identifiers (UUIDs) and writes them to the buffer
pointed to by
.Fa store .
The identifiers are generated according to the syntax and semantics of the
DCE version 1 variant of universally unique identifiers.
See below for a more in-depth description of the identifiers.
When no IEEE 802
address is available for the node field, a random multicast address is
generated for each invocation of the system call.
According to the algorithm of generating time-based UUIDs, this will also
force a new random clock sequence, thereby increasing the likelihood for
the identifier to be unique.
.Pp
When multiple identifiers are to be generated, the
.Fn uuidgen
system call will generate a set of identifiers that is dense in such a way
that there is no identifier that is larger than the smallest identifier in the
set and smaller than the largest identifier in the set and that is not already
in the set.
.Pp
Universally unique identifiers, also known as globally unique identifiers
(GUIDs), have a binary representation of 128-bits.
The grouping and meaning of these bits is described by the following
structure and its description of the fields that follow it:
.Bd -literal
struct uuid {
	uint32_t	time_low;
	uint16_t	time_mid;
	uint16_t	time_hi_and_version;
	uint8_t		clock_seq_hi_and_reserved;
	uint8_t		clock_seq_low;
	uint8_t		node[_UUID_NODE_LEN];
};
.Ed
.Bl -tag -width ".Va clock_seq_hi_and_reserved"
.It Va time_low
The least significant 32 bits of a 60-bit timestamp.
This field is stored in the native byte-order.
.It Va time_mid
The least significant 16 bits of the most significant 28 bits of the 60-bit
timestamp.
This field is stored in the native byte-order.
.It Va time_hi_and_version
The most significant 12 bits of the 60-bit timestamp multiplexed with a 4-bit
version number.
The version number is stored in the most significant 4 bits of the 16-bit
field.
This field is stored in the native byte-order.
.It Va clock_seq_hi_and_reserved
The most significant 6 bits of a 14-bit sequence number multiplexed with a
2-bit variant value.
Note that the width of the variant value is determined by the variant itself.
Identifiers generated by the
.Fn uuidgen
system call have variant value 10b.
the variant value is stored in the most significant bits of the field.
.It Va clock_seq_low
The least significant 8 bits of a 14-bit sequence number.
.It Va node
The 6-byte IEEE 802 (MAC) address of one of the interfaces of the node.
If no such interface exists, a random multi-cast address is used instead.
.El
.Pp
The binary representation is sensitive to byte ordering.
Any multi-byte field is to be stored in the local or native byte-order and
identifiers must be converted when transmitted to hosts that do not agree
on the byte-order.
The specification does not however document what this means in concrete
terms and is otherwise beyond the scope of this system call.
.Sh RETURN VALUES
.Rv -std
.Sh ERRORS
The
.Fn uuidgen
system call can fail with:
.Bl -tag -width Er
.It Bq Er EFAULT
The buffer pointed to by
.Fa store
could not be written to for any or all identifiers.
.It Bq Er EINVAL
The
.Fa count
argument is less than 1 or larger than the hard upper limit of 2048.
.El
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr uuidgen 1 ,
.Xr uuid 3
.Sh STANDARDS
The identifiers are represented and generated in conformance with the DCE 1.1
RPC specification.
The
.Fn uuidgen
system call is itself not part of the specification.
.Sh HISTORY
The
.Fn uuidgen
system call first appeared in
.Fx 5.0 .