Linux Hardware Identifiers

Need hardware details for system inventory, troubleshooting, or driver issues? Linux provides several tools to gather hardware information.

Basic system information

For system manufacturer, model, and serial number:

dmidecode -t system

Example output:

# dmidecode 3.3
Getting SMBIOS data from sysfs.
SMBIOS 3.2.0 present.

Handle 0x0001, DMI type 1, 27 bytes
System Information
	Manufacturer: Dell Inc.
	Product Name: Latitude 7420
	Version: Not Specified
	Serial Number: ABCDE12
	UUID: 12345678-1234-5678-1234-567812345678
	Wake-up Type: Power Switch
	SKU Number: 0A1B2C3
	Family: Latitude

Other hardware components

Dmidecode can retrieve information about specific hardware components using different type numbers:

dmidecode -t bios      # BIOS details
dmidecode -t processor # CPU information
dmidecode -t memory    # Memory/RAM details
dmidecode -t chassis   # System enclosure information

Alternative tools

For a more comprehensive hardware overview:

lshw -short          # Brief hardware listing
lspci                # PCI devices
lsusb                # USB devices
lscpu                # CPU details
cat /proc/cpuinfo    # Detailed processor info
free -h              # Memory usage and total

The lshw command can also export to HTML format for better readability:

sudo lshw -html > hardware.html