Last modified: Aug. 5, 2008

Contents
1 - Summary
2 - Software installation
3 - Commands


1 - Summary

This guide shows how to get the system serial number and BIOS information
in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4. It will show how to compile and install
dmidecode from source. For this guide to work you will need to be running
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.


2 - Software installation

Dmidecode can be downloaded at http://www.nongnu.org/dmidecode/. This will be
downloaded, compiled and installed from source. Dmidecode will be install to
/usr/local.
# cd ~
# rpm -qa | grep dmidecode
# whereis dmidecode
dmidecode: /usr/sbin/dmidecode
# wget http://download.savannah.gnu.org/releases/dmidecode/dmidecode-2.9.tar.gz
# tar -zxvf dmidecode-2.9.tar.gz
# cd dmidecode-2.9
# make
# sudo make install

Add the following at the start of the /etc/profile file. This will make it so
the newly compiled dmidecode utilities in /usr/local will be used instead of
the ones in /usr.

  export PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/sbin:/sbin

# sudo cp /etc/profile /etc/profile.original
# sudo vi /etc/profile


3 - Commands

You can display the system information including serial number by typing the
following as the root user.
# dmidecode -t 1 | grep -e 'Manufacturer' -e 'Product Name' -e 'Serial Number' | cut -f 2
Manufacturer: Dell Computer Corporation
Product Name: PowerEdge 1800
Serial Number: XXXXXXX

You can display the BIOS information by typing the following as the root user.
# dmidecode -t 0 | grep -e 'Vendor' -e 'Version' -e 'Release Date' | cut -f 2
Vendor: Dell Computer Corporation
Version: XXX
Release Date: XX/XX/XXXX