1smbios(1M) System Administration Commands smbios(1M)
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6 smbios - display the contents of a System Management BIOS image
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9 smbios [-BeOsx] [-i id] [-t type] [-w file] [file]
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13 The smbios utility displays the contents of the System Management BIOS
14 (SMBIOS) image exported by the current system or stored in a file.
15 SMBIOS is an industry-standard mechanism for low-level system software
16 to export hardware configuration information to higher-level system
17 management software. The SMBIOS data format itself is defined by the
18 Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF). Refer to http://www.dmtf.org
19 for more information about SMBIOS and to obtain a copy of the SMBIOS
20 specification and implementation guidelines.
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23 The SMBIOS image consists of a table of structures, each describing
24 some aspect of the system software or hardware configuration. By
25 default, smbios displays the entire contents of the current SMBIOS
26 image. If the -s option is specified, smbios displays a summary of the
27 structures that are present in the image. If the -w option is speci‐
28 fied, smbios writes a copy of the SMBIOS image to the specified file.
29 smbios can then be applied to the resulting file to display its con‐
30 tent.
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33 smbios attempts to display each structure and its content in a human-
34 readable fashion. If smbios does not recognize a structure's type or
35 content, the raw hexadecimal data for the structure is displayed.
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38 The following options are supported:
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40 -B Disable header validation for broken BIOSes.
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42 By default, smbios attempts to validate the SMBIOS header by
43 verifying the anchor strings, header checksums, and version
44 number. This option might be necessary when a BIOS has a
45 non-compliant header.
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48 -e Display the contents of the SMBIOS entry point rather than
49 the contents of the SMBIOS structure table.
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52 -i id Display only the specified structure, named by its integer
53 id.
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56 -O Display obsolete structure types.
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58 By default, smbios elides output for structures whose type
59 is marked as obsolete in the DMTF SMBIOS specification.
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62 -s Display only a summary listing of the structure identifiers
63 and types, instead of the content of each selected struc‐
64 ture.
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67 -t type Display only those structures whose type matches the speci‐
68 fied integer type, as defined the DMTF SMBIOS specification.
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71 -w file Write a copy of the SMBIOS image to the specified file and
72 exit.
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74 The SMBIOS entry point is written to the start of the file
75 with its structure table address set to the file offset of
76 the structure table, and a new entry point checksum is com‐
77 puted.
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80 -x Display raw hexadecimal data for the selected structures in
81 addition to human-readable output.
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83 By default, hexadecimal data is only displayed if smbios
84 cannot display human-readable output for the selected struc‐
85 tures.
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89 The following operands are supported:
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91 file Specifies an alternate SMBIOS image to display instead of the
92 current system's SMBIOS image.
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96 The following exit values are returned:
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98 0 Successful completion. All structures in the SMBIOS image were
99 examined successfully.
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102 1 A fatal error occurred, such as failure to open the specified
103 file or device, or corruption in the image.
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106 2 Invalid command-line options were specified.
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110 /dev/smbios Kernel SMBIOS image device. This device special file is
111 used to export a snapshot of the current system SMBIOS
112 image.
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116 See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:
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121 ┌─────────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────┐
122 │ ATTRIBUTE TYPE │ ATTRIBUTE VALUE │
123 ├─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
124 │Availability │SUNWcsu │
125 ├─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
126 │Interface Stability │See below. │
127 └─────────────────────────────┴─────────────────────────────┘
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130 The command-line options are Evolving. The human-readable output is
131 Unstable.
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134 prtdiag(1M), attributes(5), smbios(7D)
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137 System Management BIOS Reference Specification (see
138 http://www.dmtf.org)
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141 The implementation of a System Management BIOS image is entirely at the
142 discretion of the system and BIOS vendors. Not all systems export an
143 SMBIOS. The SMBIOS structure content varies widely between systems and
144 BIOS vendors and frequently does not comply with the guidelines
145 included in the specification. Some structure fields might not be
146 filled in by the BIOS at all, and others might be filled inwith non-
147 conforming values.
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151SunOS 5.11 31 Aug 2005 smbios(1M)