dmidecode

Motivation

After connect to a remote server via ssh, I want to know whether it's a physical or a virtual host.

Introduction¹

dmidecode is a tool for dumping a computer's DMI (some say SMBIOS) table contents in a humanreadable format. This table contains a description of the system's hardware components, as well as other useful pieces of information such as serial numbers and BIOS revision. 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

Useful Options

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-s, --string KEYWORD

display the value of the DMI string identified by KEYWORD

Example:

dmidecode -s system-product-name would display system name.

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-t, --type TYPE

display the entries of type TYPE

Example:

dmidecode -t memory would display system memory information.

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1. From man page.