On Thu, Feb 19, 2015 at 11:49:14AM -0800, Jason Helfman wrote:
> Hello All,
>
> I was wondering if it may be possible to call sysctl, instead of requiring
> dmidecode to be installed for getting the uuid of a system?
>
> According to the user that filed the bug below, dmidecode needs to be
> installed to get the uuid, or errors will  be printed in logs to get the
> uuid.
>
> https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=196733
>
> I was wondering if sysctl can be called to get this information for
> FreeBSD? I am not sure if Linux would give similar information, but would
> think it might. Beyond this, I am not sure if dmidecode is used for other
> aspects beyond uuid where it is required where sysctl doesn't give the
> information needed.
>
> $ sudo dmidecode |grep -i uuid
>         UUID: 42355DE8-C55C-E487-8E16-509A78EB5EE1
> $ sysctl kern.hostuuid
> kern.hostuuid: 42355de8-c55c-e487-8e16-509a78eb5ee1

On modern systems we could probably use the sysctl, but on older linux
platforms at least dmidecode is the only way to get the info we need.
Regardless it is fine to use whatever approach works best on FreeBSD.
Getting host UUIDs is not covered by anything in POSIX, so it will all
be OS specific code.