Deprecate CentralProcessor's getSystemSerialNumber method

[dbwiddis]

It duplicated ComputerSystem's getSerialNumber method. See #296

[coveralls]

Coverage remained the same at 92.222% when pulling 842055d on dbwiddis:master into 6a25d7a on oshi:master.

[neilyoung]

What is supposed to be used instead?

[Qiu1024]

I think it's:
"
SystemInfo sys = new SystemInfo();
ComputerSystem cs = sys.getHardware().getComputerSystem();
String serialNum = cs.getSerialNumber();
"

[neilyoung]

@Qiu1024 Indeed. Thanks

[neilyoung]

@Qiu1024 The problem with cs.getSerialNumber() is, that it returns "unkown" on two different Ubuntu systems, hence it cannot be used for generating keys. What else do you have? :)

[YoshiEnVerde]

@neilyoung On which Ubuntu versions is this failing? Are you running the code under root privileges?

[neilyoung]

@YoshiEnVerde

Ubuntu 17.10 on a 10 years old 32 bit Samsung R509 laptop
And no, I'm not (g)root :)

EDIT: If I run as sudo, the correct serial number appears. Is root required?

[YoshiEnVerde]

@neilyoung Then that's where it's failing. For older versions of Linux, the code defaults to HAL (and equivalent) tables. For newer versions, we check values that can only be accessed by root.

Sadly, hardware info at this level can only be accessed by root users in Linux

[dbwiddis]

Sadly, hardware info at this level can only be accessed by root users in Linux

Sadly for OSHI. Happily for privacy advocates who won this particular battle in Linux.

But yes... for full functionality on Linux (and many Unix features) part of your implementation plan needs to be running OSHI (or the program you import it into) with elevated privileges.

[neilyoung]

@dbwiddis Strange enough, the same code doesn't need to have root on MacOSX. Cannot believe Apple to be less restrictive here :), but it seems to be the case

[dbwiddis]

There are workarounds besides root.... for example, installing hal package. OSHI has several fallbacks that it attempts but if the user doesn't cooperate, there's not much we can do!

Not sure why Apple makes it easy. :)

[neilyoung]

@dbwiddis What are the other fallbacks? There is no HAL installer any longer for Ubuntu since 10.something