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From: ams@fourier.Princeton.EDU (Andrew Simms)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi,comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Obtaining a unique, "unchangeable" number associated with an SGI workstation
Keywords: copy protection, hostids, unique identifiers
Message-ID: <12817@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>
Date: 9 Jan 90 18:23:06 GMT
Sender: news@phoenix.Princeton.EDU
Reply-To: ams@acm.Princeton.EDU ()
Followup-To: comp.sys.sgi
Organization: Princeton University
Lines: 23

Some of the folks I work for would like to make a reasonably secure
scheme to insure their product runs only on machines they are
licensed to run on.  To do this, they would like to obtain a
read-only number (such as a motherboard serial number) that
could be used as a key to operate the software only on that
machine.  I know mathematica on the Irises has a program called
mathinfo that generates a unique number but I have no idea
what it does to get it.

If there is sufficient interest, I will be happy to post
a summary of responses emailed to me.

p.s.  Ethernet addresses won't quite do it, since it needs
	to run on machines without ethernet boards.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

  Andrew Simms					ams@acm.princeton.edu
  System Administrator
  Program in Applied and Computational Math
  Princeton University
  Princeton, NJ   08544
  609/258-5324 or 609/258-6227
  609/258-1054 (fax)