GUID Generators for non-Windows systems?

[jason petrone]

Mike Fletcher <mfletch at tpresence.com> wrote:
> The E2FSProgs solution looks like the "right" way to go. Does every
> Linux/Unix system have it (or is it really easy for people to install)?  If
> so, doing an os.system under a sys.platform check sounds fine (I'm not going
> to try and wrap it as a python module on a platform to which I have no
> access :o) ).

e2fsprogs is only installed standard on linux systems I believe.  And it's
future is uncertain as it is a package of tools for a
hopefully-soon-to-be-obsolete filesystem.

Why you don't just use timestamp + MAC address as in windows?  MAC address'
are pretty easy to get in a cross-unix manner using the ifconfig program.

I'm not sure what windows does when there is no ethernet card, but falling
back on a high-precision timestamp or random generated guid would only be
a couple of lines of python.  Thats all e2fsprogs uuidgen does anyways.

-jason