|
| 1 | +** INTRODUCTION ** |
| 2 | + |
| 3 | +Dmidecode reports information about your system's hardware as described in |
| 4 | +your system BIOS according to the SMBIOS/DMI standard. This information |
| 5 | +typically includes system manufacturer, model name, serial number, BIOS |
| 6 | +version, asset tag as well as a lot of other details of varying level of |
| 7 | +interest and reliability depending on the manufacturer. This will often |
| 8 | +include usage status for the CPU sockets, expansion slots (e.g. AGP, PCI, |
| 9 | +ISA) and memory module slots, and the list of I/O ports (e.g. serial, |
| 10 | +parallel, USB). |
| 11 | + |
| 12 | +DMI data can be used to enable or disable specific portions of kernel code |
| 13 | +depending on the specific hardware. Thus, one use of dmidecode is for kernel |
| 14 | +developers to detect system "signatures" and add them to the kernel source |
| 15 | +code when needed. |
| 16 | + |
| 17 | +Beware that DMI data have proven to be too unreliable to be blindly trusted. |
| 18 | +Dmidecode does not scan your hardware, it only reports what the BIOS told it |
| 19 | +to. |
| 20 | + |
| 21 | + |
| 22 | +** INSTALLATION ** |
| 23 | + |
| 24 | +The home web page for dmidecode is hosted on Savannah: |
| 25 | + http://www.nongnu.org/dmidecode/ |
| 26 | +You will find the latest version (including CVS) there, as well as fresh news |
| 27 | +and other interesting material, such as a list of related projects and |
| 28 | +articles. |
| 29 | + |
| 30 | +This program was first written for Linux, and has since been reported to work |
| 31 | +on FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, BeOS, Cygwin and Solaris as well. |
| 32 | + |
| 33 | +There's no configure script, so simply run "make" to build dmidecode, and |
| 34 | +"make install" to install it. You also can use "make uninstall" to remove |
| 35 | +all the files you installed. By default, files are installed in /usr/local |
| 36 | +but you can change this behavior by editing the Makefile file and setting |
| 37 | +prefix to wherever you want. You may change the C compiler and the |
| 38 | +compilation flags as well. |
| 39 | + |
| 40 | +Optionally, you can run "make strip" prior to "make install" if you want |
| 41 | +smaller binaries. However, be aware that this will prevent any further |
| 42 | +attempt to debug the programs. |
| 43 | + |
| 44 | +Two parameters can be set in the Makefile file to make dmidecode work on |
| 45 | +non-i386 systems. They should be used if your system uses the big endian |
| 46 | +byte ordering (Motorola) or doesn't support unaligned memory accesses, |
| 47 | +respectively. For example, compiling for a SPARC processor would require |
| 48 | +both (but I am not aware of SPARC-based systems implementing SMBIOS). |
| 49 | +Compiling for an IA64 processor requires the memory alignment workaround, |
| 50 | +and it is enabled automatically. |
| 51 | + |
| 52 | + |
| 53 | +** DOCUMENTATION ** |
| 54 | + |
| 55 | +Each tool has a manual page, found in the "man" subdirectory. Manual pages |
| 56 | +are installed by "make install". See these manual pages for command line |
| 57 | +interface details and tool specific information. |
| 58 | + |
| 59 | +For an history of the changes made to dmidecode, see the CHANGELOG file. |
| 60 | + |
| 61 | +If you need help, your best chances are to visit the web page (see the |
| 62 | +INSTALLATION section above) or to get in touch with the developers directly. |
| 63 | +Have a look at the AUTHORS file and contact one of the maintainers. |
| 64 | + |
| 65 | +If you want to help with the development of dmidecode, please consider |
| 66 | +joining the dmidecode-devel discussion list: |
| 67 | + http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/dmidecode-devel |
| 68 | + |
| 69 | + |
| 70 | +** COMMON PROBLEMS ** |
| 71 | + |
| 72 | +IA-64 |
| 73 | + |
| 74 | +Non-Linux systems are not yet supported. |
| 75 | + |
| 76 | +MMAP |
| 77 | + |
| 78 | +Note that mmap() is now used by default wherever possible, since this seems |
| 79 | +to solve a number of problems. This default behavior can be changed in |
| 80 | +config.h. Just to make sure this is clear, mmap() is not used for performance |
| 81 | +reasons but to increase the number of systems on which dmidecode can be |
| 82 | +successfully run. |
| 83 | + |
| 84 | +CYGWIN |
| 85 | + |
| 86 | +Dmidecode was reported to work under Cygwin. It seems that /dev/mem doesn't |
| 87 | +work properly before version 1.5.10 though, so you will need to use at least |
| 88 | +this version. |
| 89 | + |
| 90 | + |
| 91 | +** MISCELLANEOUS TOOLS ** |
| 92 | + |
| 93 | +Three other tools come along with dmidecode: biosdecode, ownership and |
| 94 | +vpddecode. These tools are only useful on systems with a BIOS, so they |
| 95 | +are not built on IA-64 by default. |
| 96 | + |
| 97 | +BIOSDECODE |
| 98 | + |
| 99 | +This one prints all BIOS related information it can find in /dev/mem. |
| 100 | +It used to be part of dmidecode itself, but as dmidecode was growing, |
| 101 | +we felt that the non-DMI part had to be moved to a separate tool. |
| 102 | + |
| 103 | +OWNERSHIP |
| 104 | + |
| 105 | +This tool was written on a request by Luc Van de Velde for use with Novell |
| 106 | +tools in his company. It retrieves the "ownership tag" that can be set on |
| 107 | +most Compaq computers. Since it uses the same mechanisms dmidecode and |
| 108 | +biosdecode use, and could be of some use for other people as well, we |
| 109 | +decided to make it part of the project. |
| 110 | + |
| 111 | +VPDDECODE |
| 112 | + |
| 113 | +This tool prints the contents of the "vital product data" structure as |
| 114 | +found in most IBM and Lenovo computers. It used to have a lookup table |
| 115 | +for the machine name, but it was unreliable and hard to maintain so it |
| 116 | +was ultimately dropped. It has a command line interface. |
0 commit comments