Sometimes I need to generate something on the command line and I often don’t remember how. I search on the internet or ask AI about it and usually it helps. Still want to write it down though.

Generate UUID

There are many versions UUID, here’s two methods I prefer:

~> uuidgen
6d3236dd-9f46-4de7-87e3-91919f6a65b6
~> dbus-uuidgen
a5cf5ce38ed6ba670029c082685d347d

These require installing packages uuidgen and dbus respectively.

A timestamp

Easy enough:

~> date +"%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ"
2025-06-20T12:03:56Z

date is available in busybox and GNU coreutils.