SMBIOS(8) Maintenance Commands and Procedures SMBIOS(8)

NAME

smbios - display the contents of a System Management BIOS image

SYNOPSIS

smbios [-BeOsx] [-i id] [-t type] [-w file] [file]

DESCRIPTION

The smbios utility displays the contents of the System Management BIOS
(SMBIOS) image exported by the current system or stored in a file. SMBIOS
is an industry-standard mechanism for low-level system software to export
hardware configuration information to higher-level system management
software. The SMBIOS data format itself is defined by the Distributed
Management Task Force (DMTF). Refer to http://www.dmtf.org for more
information about SMBIOS and to obtain a copy of the SMBIOS specification
and implementation guidelines.


The SMBIOS image consists of a table of structures, each describing some
aspect of the system software or hardware configuration. By default,
smbios displays the entire contents of the current SMBIOS image. If the
-s option is specified, smbios displays a summary of the structures that
are present in the image. If the -w option is specified, smbios writes a
copy of the SMBIOS image to the specified file. smbios can then be
applied to the resulting file to display its content.


smbios attempts to display each structure and its content in a human-
readable fashion. If smbios does not recognize a structure's type or
content, the raw hexadecimal data for the structure is displayed.

OPTIONS

The following options are supported:

-B
Disable header validation for broken BIOSes.

By default, smbios attempts to validate the SMBIOS header by
verifying the anchor strings, header checksums, and version
number. This option might be necessary when a BIOS has a non-
compliant header.


-e
Display the contents of the SMBIOS entry point rather than
the contents of the SMBIOS structure table.


-i id
Display only the specified structure, named by its integer id.


-O
Display obsolete structure types.

By default, smbios elides output for structures whose type is
marked as obsolete in the DMTF SMBIOS specification.


-s
Display only a summary listing of the structure identifiers
and types, instead of the content of each selected structure.


-t type
Display only those structures whose type matches the specified
integer type, as defined the DMTF SMBIOS specification.


-w file
Write a copy of the SMBIOS image to the specified file and
exit.

The SMBIOS entry point is written to the start of the file
with its structure table address set to the file offset of the
structure table, and a new entry point checksum is computed.


-x
Display raw hexadecimal data for the selected structures in
addition to human-readable output.

By default, hexadecimal data is only displayed if smbios
cannot display human-readable output for the selected
structures.

OPERANDS

The following operands are supported:

file
Specifies an alternate SMBIOS image to display instead of the
current system's SMBIOS image.

EXIT STATUS

The following exit values are returned:

0
Successful completion. All structures in the SMBIOS image were
examined successfully.


1
A fatal error occurred, such as failure to open the specified file
or device, or corruption in the image.


2
Invalid command-line options were specified.

FILES

/dev/smbios
Kernel SMBIOS image device. This device special file is
used to export a snapshot of the current system SMBIOS
image.

ATTRIBUTES

See attributes(7) for descriptions of the following attributes:


+--------------------+-----------------+
| ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE |
+--------------------+-----------------+
|Interface Stability | See below. |
+--------------------+-----------------+


The command-line options are Evolving. The human-readable output is
Unstable.

SEE ALSO

smbios(4D), attributes(7), prtdiag(8)


System Management BIOS Reference Specification (see http://www.dmtf.org)

NOTES

The implementation of a System Management BIOS image is entirely at the
discretion of the system and BIOS vendors. Not all systems export an
SMBIOS. The SMBIOS structure content varies widely between systems and
BIOS vendors and frequently does not comply with the guidelines included
in the specification. Some structure fields might not be filled in by
the BIOS at all, and others might be filled inwith non-conforming values.


This utility incorrectly interprets the first three fields of the system
information UUID field as network-endian; the SMBIOS specification
defines them as little-endian. The "UUID (Endian-corrected)" field has
the correct value.

March 29, 2018 SMBIOS(8)