Decoding hardware information of a PC

Checking out machine hardware information is no more a geeky thing of olden days where you need to go through the hardware specification documents or to open up a physical machine to find out the hardware details if the specification documents are missing. Now we have some really cool handy software tools to help us out.

I thought to make a page with some important tools which help us in decoding the hardware related information on a Linux Box. Feel free to drop a comment with the tool names I missed out in this post.

NOTE: All of them are ordered in alphabetical order and I am trying these tools on a Ubuntu machine running in virtual box. So some of the tool outputs might be displaying names likes VirtualBox and Oracle Corporation.

biosdecode
Also known as BIOS Information Decoder is one of the best tools to check the BIOS information. It parses the BIOS memory and displays the info about your system BIOS. For more detailed info checkout man-page.

ACPI 2.0 present.
 OEM Identifier: VBOX  
 RSD Table 32-bit Address: 0x33FF0000
 XSD Table 64-bit Address: 0x0000000033FF0030
BIOS32 Service Directory present.
 Revision: 0
 Calling Interface Address: 0x000FDA00
PCI Interrupt Routing 1.0 present.
 Router ID: 00:01.0
 Exclusive IRQs: None
 Compatible Router: 8086:7000
.
.
SMBIOS 2.5 present.
 Structure Table Length: 352 bytes
 Structure Table Address: 0x000E1000
 Number Of Structures: 5
 Maximum Structure Size: 255 bytes

dmidecode
Also known as DMI Table Decoder. It just dumps the DMI or SMBIOS information, to screen, in a human-readable format. Quite verbose with the information it provides but this tool seems to be unreliable as per its users in some case. For more detailed info checkout man-page.

# dmidecode
# dmidecode 2.9
SMBIOS 2.5 present.
5 structures occupying 352 bytes.
Table at 0x000E1000.

Handle 0x0000, DMI type 0, 20 bytes
BIOS Information
 Vendor: innotek GmbH
 Version: VirtualBox
 Release Date: 12/01/2006
.
Handle 0x0001, DMI type 1, 27 bytes
System Information
 Manufacturer: innotek GmbH
 Product Name: VirtualBox
 Version: 1.2
 Serial Number: 0
 UUID: B220160E-6104-4C00-B1B4-D00F6384DD24

lspci
It displays complete information about all the PCI buses in the system and the devices connected to them. As you can see in below output we can see about type of ethernet nic cards being used and other stuff. For more detailed info checkout man-page.

# lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 440FX - 82441FX PMC [Natoma] (rev 02)
00:01.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82371SB PIIX3 ISA [Natoma/Triton II]
00:01.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 IDE (rev 01)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: InnoTek Systemberatung GmbH VirtualBox Graphics Adapter
00:03.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82540EM Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 02)
00:04.0 System peripheral: InnoTek Systemberatung GmbH VirtualBox Guest Service
00:06.0 USB Controller: Apple Computer Inc. KeyLargo/Intrepid USB
00:07.0 Bridge: Intel Corporation 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 ACPI (rev 08)
00:08.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82540EM Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 02)
00:0d.0 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82801HBM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) SATA AHCI Controller (rev 02)