If you need to know what hardware your computer or server has without having physical access to the machine, you can look it up using a Linux command called dmidecode.
A couple of weeks ago I had to find out the product and model of my HP server. I knew it was an HP Proliant DL 360 but didn’t know if it was a G3, G4, G5 or G6. By using dmidecode we extract this information:
[root@mylinuxserver /]# dmidecode --type 1 # dmidecode 2.10 SMBIOS 2.3 present. Handle 0x0100, DMI type 1, 25 bytes System Information Manufacturer: HP Product Name: ProLiant DL360 G4p Version: Not Specified Serial Number: xxxxxxxx UUID: xxxxxxxx Wake-up Type: Power Switch
There are a lot of options you can use with dmidecode to extract all the information you want. Just take a look at the following list:
Type Information ---------------------------------------- 0 BIOS 1 System 2 Base Board 3 Chassis 4 Processor 5 Memory Controller 6 Memory Module 7 Cache 8 Port Connector 9 System Slots 10 On Board Devices 11 OEM Strings 12 System Configuration Options 13 BIOS Language 14 Group Associations 15 System Event Log 16 Physical Memory Array 17 Memory Device 18 32-bit Memory Error 19 Memory Array Mapped Address 20 Memory Device Mapped Address 21 Built-in Pointing Device 22 Portable Battery 23 System Reset 24 Hardware Security 25 System Power Controls 26 Voltage Probe 27 Cooling Device 28 Temperature Probe 29 Electrical Current Probe 30 Out-of-band Remote Access 31 Boot Integrity Services 32 System Boot 33 64-bit Memory Error 34 Management Device 35 Management Device Component 36 Management Device Threshold Data 37 Memory Channel 38 IPMI Device 39 Power Supply
This will make your life as a Linux Engineer much easier!