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 can also 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 developed by the DMTF (Desktop Management Task Force). As you run it, dmidecode will try to locate the DMI table. If it succeeds, it will then parse this table and display a list of records.

Let us look at a few dmidecode commands

Running basic dmidecode

Enter the following command in terminal – dmidecode Some of these commands may require root privileges  

To Get Physical Memory (RAM) Information Using Dmidecode

Enter the following command in terminal – dmidecode -t 16

To Get BIOS information using dmidecode

Enter the following command in terminal – dmidecode -t bios

To View Manufacturer, Model and Serial number of the equipment using dmidecode

Enter the following command in terminal – dmidecode -t system

To get Hardware Information about chassis

Enter the following command in terminal – dmidecode -t chassis

Getting HW information about baseboard

Enter the following command in terminal – dmidecode -t baseboard

To get 64-bit Memory Error information using type id along with dmidecode

Enter the following command in terminal – dmidecode -t 33

All Dmi Types

​The following are all the available dmi types available for inquiry by dmidecode.​Type​Information1System2​Base Board3Chassis4Processor5Memory Controller6Memory Module7Cache8Port Connector9System Slots10On Board Devices11OEM Strings12​System Configuration Options13BIOS Language14Group Associations15System Event Log16Physical Memory Array17Memory Device1832-bit Memory Error19Memory Array Mapped Address20Memory Device Mapped Address21Built-in Pointing Device22Portable Battery23System Reset24Hardware Security25​System Power Controls26Voltage Probe27Cooling Device​28Temperature Probe29Electrical Current Probe30Out-of-band Remote Access31Boot Integrity Services32System Boot3364-bit Memory Error34Management Device35Management Device Component36Management Device Threshold Data37Memory Channel38IPMI Device39Power Supply40Additional Information41Onboard Device Extended Information42Management Controller Host Interface ​Note that keywords may be used in place of the type numbers. Keywords are not case sensitive Usage in the following formats are all equivalent

dmidecode –type 0 –type 13dmidecode –type 0,13Dmidecode –type biosDmidecode — type BIOS

Conclusion

​Like I mentioned earlier, you can always run man dmidecode command to find out more about this command tool. I hope you find this simple tutorial quite useful. Share your thoughts with us in the comments. Thanks for reading.