BIOSDECODE

Section: Maintenance Commands (8)
Updated: February 2007
Index Return to Main Contents
 

NAME

biosdecode - BIOS information decoder  

SYNOPSIS

biosdecode [OPTIONS]

 

DESCRIPTION

biosdecode parses the BIOS memory and prints information about all structures (or entry points) it knows of. Currently known entry point types are:
*
SMBIOS (System Management BIOS)
Use dmidecode for a more detailed output.
*
DMI (Desktop Management Interface, a legacy version of SMBIOS)
Use dmidecode for a more detailed output.
*
SYSID
*
PNP (Plug and Play)
*
ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface)
*
BIOS32 (BIOS32 Service Directory)
*
PIR (PCI IRQ Routing)
*
32OS (BIOS32 Extension, Compaq-specific)
See ownership for a Compaq ownership tag retrieval tool.
*
SNY (Sony-specific, not decoded)
*
VPD (Vital Product Data, IBM-specific)
Use vpddecode for a more detailed output.
*
FJKEYINF (Application Panel, Fujitsu-specific)

biosdecode started its life as a part of dmidecode but as more entry point types were added, if was moved to a different program.

 

OPTIONS

-d, --dev-mem FILE
Read memory from device FILE (default: /dev/mem)
-h, --help
Display usage information and exit
-V, --version
Display the version and exit

 

FILES

/dev/mem  

BUGS

Most of the time, biosdecode prints too much information (you don't really care about addresses) or not enough (because it doesn't follow pointers and has no lookup tables).  

AUTHORS

Alan Cox, Jean Delvare  

SEE ALSO

dmidecode(8), mem(4), ownership(8), vpddecode(8)