From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: David Miller Subject: Re: generating a Linux WWN? Date: Sat, 06 Oct 2007 19:46:25 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <20071006.194625.64817413.davem@davemloft.net> References: <1191622488.3475.54.camel@localhost.localdomain> <20071005.151711.112302061.davem@davemloft.net> <1191679870.3338.17.camel@localhost.localdomain> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: Received: from 74-93-104-97-Washington.hfc.comcastbusiness.net ([74.93.104.97]:42941 "EHLO sunset.davemloft.net" rhost-flags-OK-FAIL-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751192AbXJGCq0 (ORCPT ); Sat, 6 Oct 2007 22:46:26 -0400 In-Reply-To: <1191679870.3338.17.camel@localhost.localdomain> Sender: linux-scsi-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-scsi@vger.kernel.org To: James.Bottomley@SteelEye.com Cc: ltuikov@yahoo.com, jeff@garzik.org, lydianconcepts@gmail.com, mdr@sgi.com, James.Smart@emulex.com, linux-scsi@vger.kernel.org From: James Bottomley Date: Sat, 06 Oct 2007 09:11:10 -0500 > My problem with auto generated is that it's provably impossible to > generate globally unique numbers for WWNs without some internal source > of uniqueness (I know sparcs have this in their serial number, but most > PCs unfortunately don't). If you have at least one ethernet NIC, you have at least one globally unique MAC address, which is 6 bytes of uniqueness to draw from. I'm sure there are countless other possibilities. I think the SAN issue is way overstated. Sure it's real, but so are SHA conflicts in the kernel GIT repository.