Generating UUIDs of different versions in Linux Terminal

Jan 13, 2026 | | 1 min | #linux

Generate

To generate V4, simply run uuidgen:

uuidgen

output:

0c034caa-d26f-486a-96e4-28df9042fc8c

To generate V5, specify namespace (e.g., @dns) and name (e.g., example.com) together with --sha1 flag:

uuidgen --sha1 --namespace @dns --name "example.com"

output:

cfbff0d1-9375-5685-968c-48ce8b15ae17

As for V7, you can’t use uuidgen directly.

To parse a UUID and get its version and variant, use uuidparse:

uuidparse cfbff0d1-9375-5685-968c-48ce8b15ae17

output:

UUID                                  VARIANT TYPE       TIME
cfbff0d1-9375-5685-968c-48ce8b15ae17  DCE     sha1-based