Great Things You Can Confirm with dmidecode

dmidecode-command

I’ve just started working on the Linux Commands section of Unix Tutorial, and dmidecode is one of the best commands to mention when it comes to recent Linux distros. It’s found in most distributions and helps with learning lots of useful facts about your environments – both physical and virtual.

How To Use dmidecode Command

dmidecode command needs to be run as root and shows you hardware information about your system:

BIOS name and version
manufacturer of your server, desktop or laptop
model name and serial number of your system

Simply run the command and pipe it to a pager like more or less:

greys@xps:~ $ sudo dmidecode | less
# dmidecode 3.2
Getting SMBIOS data from sysfs.
SMBIOS 3.2.1 present.
# SMBIOS implementations newer than version 3.2.0 are not
# fully supported by this version of dmidecode.
Table at 0x000E0000.

Handle 0x0000, DMI type 0, 26 bytes
BIOS Information
Vendor: Dell Inc.
Version: 1.2.1
Release Date: 02/14/2019
Address: 0xF0000
Runtime Size: 64 kB
ROM Size: 32 MB
...

Browsing dmidecode output and searching through the output are the best ways to use dmidecode command, but once you become familiar with your environment you’ll probably get a few dmidecode parameters you can grep for.

Hardware Vendor with dmidecode

This will report the manufacturer of your system. For my XPS laptop, it shows Dell:

greys@xps:~ $ sudo dmidecode | grep Vendor
Vendor: Dell Inc.
Vendor ID:

Model name with dmidecode

Look for the Product Name to confirm the name of your system. It shows my laptop’s model for me:

greys@xps:~ $ sudo dmidecode | grep Product
Product Name: XPS 13 9380
Product Name: 0KTW76

Motherboard with dmidecode

Finding the motherboard model will require you to search through the less pager output (press / and start typing word motherboard, then scroll up and down).

Here’s what one of my dedicated servers shows:

Handle 0x0002, DMI type 2, 15 bytes
Base Board Information
Manufacturer: Supermicro
Product Name: X11SSE-F
Version: 1.01
Serial Number: ZM163S009892
Asset Tag: To be filled by O.E.M.
Features:
Board is a hosting board
Board is replaceable
Location In Chassis: To be filled by O.E.M.
Chassis Handle: 0x0003
Type: Motherboard
Contained Object Handles: 0

Serial numbers with dmidecode

Just grep for the word Serial to find lots of serial numbers of various recognised devices. One of them (the first one in the output) is the Dell’s service tag that you usually need for hardware support:

greys@xps:~ $ sudo dmidecode | grep Serial
Serial services are supported (int 14h)
Serial Number: 50G8V**
Serial Number: /50G8V**/CN***00***00F8/
Serial Number: 50G8V**
Serial Number: Not Specified
Serial Number: Not Specified
Serial Number: To Be Filled By O.E.M.
Serial Number: 0A3E
Debug Use USB(Disabled:Serial)