Computer unique fingerprint

[thru]

I need some way to uniquely identify the computer where the app is running. Do you know a way to retrieve/build some unique information that would identify a single device among any others?. The ethernet MAC address would be accessible and/or reliable?

Thanks!

[Zlatomir]

The MAC address isn't "reliable" because it can be changed very easy.
Maybe the processor or hard drive serial no, but Qt (as far as i know) doesn't provide the functionality to get that, you will need to use the OS API for that.

[thru]

Many thanks for your reply, I will have to investigate platform specific methods.

[ChrisW67]

It really depends a lot on the reason for wanting a unique id. If you want something that is unique between runs, or to implement some sort of hardware locking then you definitely need to hit the OS APIs and think hard about how someone might subvert it. Also consider who is running it; hardware information is not, in my experience, reliably accessible to unprivileged users on Windows Vista.

If you just need an identifier that is globally unique for the life of your running process then use a QUuid. There's a very, very slight chance it won't be unique in a few hundreds of machines.