How to get system configuration information without dmidecode

Question

In order to collect some system configuration information, I have been using dmidecode and the related tool lshw to find the information. This works great on most machines, but I have recently got access to a server to test my scripts on. dmidecode gives me the error:

# No SMBIOS nor DMI entry point found, sorry.

and lshw doesn't work as well. If there is a way to fix this, I would appreciate the help. Otherwise, I need to collect the following information without using dmidecode:

• System manufacturer
• System model number
• System serial number
• The BIOS date

Solution

It turns out that the reason dmidecode and lshw don't work is because the machines I was testing them on were virtual machines, apparently. It seems that virtual machines don't normally have the required information for dmidecode and lshw to work, so I don't have to fill in these fields for virtual machines.

Thanks for your help everyone.

Comments

[slm]

What's the hardware on this server?

[slm]

What distro and are you trying to run these commands as root or via sudo?

[jordanm]

Virtual machines do, as hardware is emulated. VZ containers do not.

[zephyrthenoble]

These VMs, run on a Xen hypervisor, appear to not have the required information or configuration to access SMBIOS or DMI information. I'm not sure if that has to do with a VM emulating hardware or not. I'm also not sure what a VZ container is.

[Elshan]

Also if you are running custom Linux version, Ex :Buildroot based you wouldn't get the expected output.