ideas.txt

IDE serial number - NOT SATA or SCSI
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I am using the following code to get the hard disk serial number

struct hd_driveid hd;
int ide;
ide=open("/dev/hda",O_RDONLY);
(void)ioctl(ide,HDIO_GET_IDENTITY,&hd);
(void)printf("Serial number - %s\n",hd.serial_no);

this is working fine..but for sata hard disk it is not working how 
to change the code to get SATA hard disk serial number....i 
changed "/dev/hda" to "dev/sda" that is also not working


Another alternative to find the HDD serial number
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I think I found another alternative to find the HDD serial number.
Getting the boot define is fairly easy, so is the serial number for a
ATA (IDE) hard disk. As I said, SCSI and SATA is a bit more difficult.
But there seems to be a new method that should work too - I tested it
in three very different machines, each have a different version of
Linux too. And more importantly, all without ROOT access.

Knowing the UUID or device (eg: /dev/sda1) one can simply do a lookup
in the /dev/disk/by-id/ directory. Each file in that directory has the
following information: <bus>-<brand>-<model>-<serial#>[-<partition>]
So by simply parsing the name, you can find the serial number of the device.

This option has been verified as available on the following Linux distros:
  - OpenSuse 11.2
  - Ubuntu 8.04.2
  - Debian
  - Fedora 13 & 14
  - CentOS

It seems all Linux distros since around 2006 and later have this device
information files.


Ideas for Identifying markers
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* For M2 Centres we know they must be network enabled. So use MAC addy +
  the IP address. Hash that with MD5 and go from there.

* Use the timestamp (date/time) of the /bin or C:\Windows or C:\WINNT directory.
  Convert it to seconds since 1970-01-01.

* Use MAC address, MD5 it, then grab 32bits of that.

* Total installed memory. Linux: /proc/meminfo -> MemTotal

* Check partitions on system: Linux: /proc/partitions

* CPU info. 
  - Brand
  - # of cores
  - speed in Mhz

* Query the date/time value of the '/bin' directory under Linux, or the
  'c:\Windows' (or 'c:\winnt' under Win2000). Then work out how many seconds
  or milliseconds since say 1980-01-01. You then have a pretty unique value.
  This chances of somebody else running your software and having installed
  their OS in the exact same millisecond as somebody else is pretty slim.