Live with that "the hardware address" is an ill-defined

concept, and that different ways of trying to find "the
hardware address" may return different results.  Certainly
true on both of my Windows boxes, and in different ways
(see whining on python-dev).

1 files changed, 15 insertions, 12 deletions

diff --git a/Doc/lib/libuuid.tex b/Doc/lib/libuuid.tex
index e2b429c..a9d5295 100644
--- a/Doc/lib/libuuid.tex
+++ b/Doc/lib/libuuid.tex
@@ -32,7 +32,7 @@ fields\optional{, int\optional{, version}}}}}}
 
 Create a UUID from either a string of 32 hexadecimal digits,
 a string of 16 bytes as the \var{bytes} argument, a tuple of six
-integers (32-bit \var{time_low}, 16-bit \var{time_mid}, 
+integers (32-bit \var{time_low}, 16-bit \var{time_mid},
 16-bit \var{time_hi_version},
 8-bit \var{clock_seq_hi_variant}, 8-bit \var{clock_seq_low}, 48-bit \var{node})
 as the \var{fields} argument, or a single 128-bit integer as the \var{int}
@@ -109,10 +109,13 @@ when the variant is \constant{RFC_4122}).
 The \module{uuid} module defines the following functions
 
 \begin{funcdesc}{getnode}{}
-Get the hardware address as a 48-bit integer.  The first time this runs,
-it may launch a separate program, which could be quite slow.  If all
+Get the hardware address as a 48-bit positive integer.  The first time this
+runs, it may launch a separate program, which could be quite slow.  If all
 attempts to obtain the hardware address fail, we choose a random 48-bit
-number with its eighth bit set to 1 as recommended in RFC 4122.
+number with its eighth bit set to 1 as recommended in RFC 4122.  "Hardware
+address" means the MAC address of a network interface, and on a machine
+with multiple network interfaces the MAC address of any one of them may
+be returned.
 \end{funcdesc}
 \index{getnode}
 
@@ -126,10 +129,10 @@ otherwise a random 14-bit sequence number is chosen.
 \index{uuid1}
 
 \begin{funcdesc}{uuid3}{namespace, name}
-Generate a UUID based upon a MD5 hash of the \var{name} string value 
-drawn from a specified namespace.   \var{namespace} 
+Generate a UUID based upon a MD5 hash of the \var{name} string value
+drawn from a specified namespace.   \var{namespace}
 must be one of \constant{NAMESPACE_DNS},
-\constant{NAMESPACE_URL}, \constant{NAMESPACE_OID}, 
+\constant{NAMESPACE_URL}, \constant{NAMESPACE_OID},
 or \constant{NAMESPACE_X500}.
 \end{funcdesc}
 \index{uuid3}
@@ -140,15 +143,15 @@ Generate a random UUID.
 \index{uuid4}
 
 \begin{funcdesc}{uuid5}{namespace, name}
-Generate a UUID based upon a SHA-1 hash of the \var{name} string value 
-drawn from a specified namespace.   \var{namespace} 
+Generate a UUID based upon a SHA-1 hash of the \var{name} string value
+drawn from a specified namespace.   \var{namespace}
 must be one of \constant{NAMESPACE_DNS},
-\constant{NAMESPACE_URL}, \constant{NAMESPACE_OID}, 
+\constant{NAMESPACE_URL}, \constant{NAMESPACE_OID},
 or \constant{NAMESPACE_X500}.
 \end{funcdesc}
 \index{uuid5}
 
-The \module{uuid} module defines the following namespace constants 
+The \module{uuid} module defines the following namespace constants
 for use with \function{uuid3()} or \function{uuid5()}.
 
 \begin{datadesc}{NAMESPACE_DNS}
@@ -167,7 +170,7 @@ ISO OID namespace UUID.
 X.500 DN namespace UUID.
 \end{datadesc}
 
-The \module{uuid} module defines the following constants 
+The \module{uuid} module defines the following constants
 for the possible values of the \member{variant} attribute:
 
 \begin{datadesc}{RESERVED_NCS}