biosdecode
Decode and display BIOS data structures
TLDR
SYNOPSIS
biosdecode [options]
DESCRIPTION
biosdecode parses the BIOS memory and prints information about all structures it knows of, including SMBIOS (System Management BIOS), DMI (Desktop Management Interface), ACPI, PNP (Plug and Play), BIOS32, PIR (PCI IRQ Routing), and vendor-specific structures (Compaq, IBM, Fujitsu, Sony).
For more detailed SMBIOS/DMI output, use dmidecode instead.
PARAMETERS
-d, --dev-mem FILE
Read memory from device FILE instead of default /dev/mem-V, --version
Display version information and exit-h, --help
Display help message
CAVEATS
Requires root privileges to access /dev/mem where BIOS data is stored. On modern Linux systems, dmidecode is preferred as it provides more comprehensive and detailed output. Some systems with restricted memory access may not allow biosdecode to function properly.
HISTORY
biosdecode is part of the dmidecode package, originally written by Alan Cox and maintained by Jean Delvare. It was created to provide a simple tool for extracting BIOS information on Linux systems, predating the more feature-rich dmidecode utility.
