dmidecode is a

free Free may refer to: Concept * Freedom, having the ability to do something, without having to obey anyone/anything * Freethought, a position that beliefs should be formed only on the basis of logic, reason, and empiricism * Emancipate, to procur ...

userspace command-line utility for Linux that can parse the

SMBIOS In computing, the System Management BIOS (SMBIOS) specification defines data structures (and access methods) that can be used to read management information produced by the BIOS of a computer. This eliminates the need for the operating system to ...

data. The name dmidecode is derived from

Desktop Management Interface The Desktop Management Interface (DMI) generates a standard framework for managing and tracking components in a desktop, notebook or server computer, by abstracting these components from the software that manages them. The development of DMI, 2.0 ...

, a related standard with which dmidecode originally interfaced. SMBIOS was originally named DMIBIOS. The

Linux kernel The Linux kernel is a free and open-source, monolithic, modular, multitasking, Unix-like operating system kernel. It was originally authored in 1991 by Linus Torvalds for his i386-based PC, and it was soon adopted as the kernel for the GNU ope ...

and other modern operating systems such as the BSD family contain an SMBIOS decoder, allowing systems administrators to inspect system hardware configuration and to enable or disable certain workarounds for problems with specific systems, based on the provided SMBIOS information. Information provided by this utility typically includes the system manufacturer, model name, serial number, BIOS version and asset tag, as well other details of varying level of interest and reliability, depending on the system manufacturer. The information often includes usage status for the CPU sockets, expansion slots (including AGP, PCI and ISA) and memory module slots, and the list of I/O ports (including serial, parallel and USB). Decoded DMI tables for various computer models are collected in a public GitHub repository. For

Dell Dell is an American based technology company. It develops, sells, repairs, and supports computers and related products and services. Dell is owned by its parent company, Dell Technologies. Dell sells personal computers (PCs), servers, data ...

systems there is a ''libsmbios'' utility.

References

External links

* Free software programmed in C BIOS {{Linux-stub