Thanks, figured it out!

Paul Finkel
AT&T CSO
732_420_3105

_____________________________________________
From:   FINKEL, PAUL D (ATTSI) 
Sent:   Monday, November 08, 2010 3:57 PM
To:     'bug-coreutils@gnu.org'
Subject:        hostid returns 00000000

These are both newly created VM servers running Red Hat 5_3 64 bit

output from `uname -a`:

Linux vmdbxx01 2.6.18-128.el5 #1 SMP Wed Dec 17 11:41:38 EST 2008 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux  

Paul Finkel
AT&T CSO
732_420_3105