The problem of the identity of an object composed of replaceable parts
has kept philosophers entertained for literally thousands of years --
see, for instance, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus
and all the jokes about still using your grandfather's axe (though it's
had its head replaced 3 times and its handle 7 times...).
Given typical x86 hardware you're stuck with heuristics.
One other thing you might want to look at is smbios output;
unfortunately, different vendors are horribly inconsistent in what they
put in there.
Because mac addresses can move around, rather than compute a single
identifier you might use multiple identifiers -- and ask the user for
help if there's ambiguity or a near miss..
if you come up on a system with mac addresses 1:2:3:4:5:6 and
a:b:c:d:e:f, and find a profile for a system with mac addresses
1:2:3:4:5:6 and de:ca:f1:5b:ad:00, you can guess that it might be the
same (because one address matches) but ask the user for confirmation and
give them the option to create a new profile..
- Bill
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