Dmidecode

dmidecode - DMI table decoder

SYNOPSIS

dmidecode [OPTIONS]

DESCRIPTION

dmidecode is a tool for dumping a computer's DMI (some say SMBIOS) table contents in a human-readable format. This table contains a de‐ scription of the system's hardware components, as well as other useful pieces of information such as serial numbers and BIOS revision. Thanks to this table, you can retrieve this information without having to probe for the actual hardware. While this is a good point in terms of report speed and safeness, this also makes the presented information possibly unreliable.

The DMI table doesn't only describe what the system is currently made of, it also can report the possible evolutions (such as the fastest supported CPU or the maximal amount of memory supported).

SMBIOS stands for System Management BIOS, while DMI stands for Desktop Management Interface. Both standards are tightly related and de‐ veloped by the DMTF (Desktop Management Task Force).

As you run it, dmidecode will try to locate the DMI table. It will first try to read the DMI table from sysfs, and next try reading di‐ rectly from memory if sysfs access failed. If dmidecode succeeds in locating a valid DMI table, it will then parse this table and dis‐ play a list of records like this one:

Handle 0x0002, DMI type 2, 8 bytes. Base Board Information

Manufacturer: Intel
Product Name: C440GX+
Version: 727281-001
Serial Number: INCY92700942

Each record has:

• A handle. This is a unique identifier, which allows records to reference each other. For example, processor records usually reference

 cache memory records using their handles.

• A type. The SMBIOS specification defines different types of elements a computer can be made of. In this example, the type is 2, which

 means that the record contains "Base Board Information".

• A size. Each record has a 4-byte header (2 for the handle, 1 for the type, 1 for the size), the rest is used by the record data. This

 value  doesn't  take  text  strings into account (these are placed at the end of the record), so the actual length of the record may be
 (and is often) greater than the displayed value.

• Decoded values. The information presented of course depends on the type of record. Here, we learn about the board's manufacturer,

 model, version and serial number.

OPTIONS

-d, --dev-mem FILE Read memory from device FILE (default: /dev/mem)

-q, --quiet Be less verbose. Unknown, inactive and OEM-specific entries are not displayed. Meta-data and handle references are hidden.

-s, --string KEYWORD Only display the value of the DMI string identified by KEYWORD. KEYWORD must be a keyword from the following list: bios-vendor, bios-version, bios-release-date, bios-revision, firmware-revision, system-manufacturer, system-product-name, system-version, sys‐tem-serial-number, system-uuid, system-sku-number, system-family, baseboard-manufacturer, baseboard-product-name, baseboard-version, baseboard-serial-number, baseboard-asset-tag, chassis-manufacturer, chassis-type, chassis-version, chassis-serial-number, chassis-asset-tag, processor-family, processor-manufacturer, processor-version, processor-frequency. Each keyword corresponds to a given DMI type and a given offset within this entry type. Not all strings may be meaningful or even defined on all systems. Some keywords may return more than one result on some systems (e.g. processor-version on a multi-processor system). If KEYWORD is not provided or not valid, a list of all valid keywords is printed and dmidecode exits with an error. This option cannot be used more than once. Note: on Linux, most of these strings can alternatively be read directly from sysfs, typically from files under /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id. Most of these files are even readable by regular users.

-t, --type TYPE Only display the entries of type TYPE. TYPE can be either a DMI type number, or a comma-separated list of type numbers, or a keyword from the following list: bios, system, baseboard, chassis, processor, memory, cache, connector, slot. Refer to the DMI TYPES section below for details. If this option is used more than once, the set of displayed entries will be the union of all the given types. If TYPE is not provided or not valid, a list of all valid keywords is printed and dmidecode exits with an error.

-H, --handle HANDLE Only display the entry whose handle matches HANDLE. HANDLE is a 16-bit integer.

-u, --dump Do not decode the entries, dump their contents as hexadecimal instead. Note that this is still a text output, no binary data will be thrown upon you. The strings attached to each entry are displayed as both hexadecimal and ASCII. This option is mainly useful for debugging.

--dump-bin FILE Do not decode the entries, instead dump the DMI data to a file in binary form. The generated file is suitable to pass to --from-dump later.

--from-dump FILE Read the DMI data from a binary file previously generated using --dump-bin.

--no-sysfs Do not attempt to read DMI data from sysfs files. This is mainly useful for debugging.

--oem-string N Only display the value of the OEM string number N. The first OEM string has number 1. With special value "count", return the number of OEM strings instead.

-h, --help Display usage information and exit

-V, --version Display the version and exit

Options --string, --type, --dump-bin and --oem-string determine the output format and are mutually exclusive.

Please note in case of dmidecode is run on a system with BIOS that boasts new SMBIOS specification, which is not supported by the tool yet, it will print out relevant message in addition to requested data on the very top of the output. Thus informs the output data is not reliable.

DMI TYPES

The SMBIOS specification defines the following DMI types:

Type Information ────────────────────────────────────────────

  0   BIOS
  1   System
  2   Baseboard
  3   Chassis
  4   Processor
  5   Memory Controller
  6   Memory Module
  7   Cache
  8   Port Connector
  9   System Slots
 10   On Board Devices
 11   OEM Strings
 12   System Configuration Options
 13   BIOS Language
 14   Group Associations
 15   System Event Log
 16   Physical Memory Array
 17   Memory Device

 18   32-bit Memory Error
 19   Memory Array Mapped Address
 20   Memory Device Mapped Address
 21   Built-in Pointing Device
 22   Portable Battery
 23   System Reset
 24   Hardware Security
 25   System Power Controls
 26   Voltage Probe
 27   Cooling Device
 28   Temperature Probe
 29   Electrical Current Probe
 30   Out-of-band Remote Access
 31   Boot Integrity Services
 32   System Boot
 33   64-bit Memory Error
 34   Management Device
 35   Management Device Component
 36   Management Device Threshold Data
 37   Memory Channel
 38   IPMI Device
 39   Power Supply
 40   Additional Information
 41   Onboard Devices Extended Information
 42   Management Controller Host Interface

Additionally, type 126 is used for disabled entries and type 127 is an end-of-table marker. Types 128 to 255 are for OEM-specific data. dmidecode will display these entries by default, but it can only decode them when the vendors have contributed documentation or code for them.

Keywords can be used instead of type numbers with --type. Each keyword is equivalent to a list of type numbers:

Keyword Types ────────────────────────────── bios 0, 13 system 1, 12, 15, 23, 32 baseboard 2, 10, 41 chassis 3 processor 4 memory 5, 6, 16, 17 cache 7 connector 8 slot 9

Keywords are matched case-insensitively. The following command lines are equivalent: • dmidecode --type 0 --type 13 • dmidecode --type 0,13 • dmidecode --type bios • dmidecode --type BIOS

BINARY DUMP FILE FORMAT

The binary dump files generated by --dump-bin and read using --from-dump are formatted as follows:

• The SMBIOS or DMI entry point is located at offset 0x00. It is crafted to hard-code the table address at offset 0x20. • The DMI table is located at offset 0x20.

UUID FORMAT

There is some ambiguity about how to interpret the UUID fields prior to SMBIOS specification version 2.6. There was no mention of byte swapping, and RFC 4122 says that no byte swapping should be applied by default. However, SMBIOS specification version 2.6 (and later) ex‐ plicitly states that the first 3 fields of the UUID should be read as little-endian numbers (byte-swapped). Furthermore, it implies that the same was already true for older versions of the specification, even though it was not mentioned. In practice, many hardware vendors were not byte-swapping the UUID. So, in order to preserve compatibility, it was decided to interpret the UUID fields according to RFC 4122 (no byte swapping) when the SMBIOS version is older than 2.6, and to interpret the first 3 fields as little-endian (byte-swapped) when the SMBIOS version is 2.6 or later. The Linux kernel follows the same logic.

FILES

/dev/mem /sys/firmware/dmi/tables/smbios_entry_point (Linux only) /sys/firmware/dmi/tables/DMI (Linux only)

BUGS

More often than not, information contained in the DMI tables is inaccurate, incomplete or simply wrong.

SEE ALSO

1. biosdecode(8)
2. mem(4)
3. ownership(8)
4. vpddecode(8)