How do you retrieve serial numbers for your hardware?

[futuroimperfetto]

Hello,

I am trying to see if there is any way to find serial numbers for my hardware. I found that running:


sudo dmidecode

does return a list of numbers, which I believe are what I'm looking for, but I am not too sure.

Is this OK or are there any other commands I could try?

I have a Dell XPS 1330 with a nVidia 8400 GS card and am trying to understand more about it, because it appears it might have issues, as it has been reported here:

http://direct2dell.com/one2one/archive/2008/07/25/nvidia-gpu-update-for-dell-laptop-owners.aspx

and here

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/39045/135/

I wanted to collect as much info as possible, in case they make an official list about the versions of affected the graphic cards.

Thanks!

[cdtech]

Try in a terminal:

lshw

[SteveNorman]

I dont think you can get the serial number with those commands,,only the model number. You'll probably have to open up the machine and physically check the tag.

[cdtech]

I dont think you can get the serial number with those commands,,only the model number. You'll probably have to open up the machine and physically check the tag.

Have you tried the command?

*-usb
description: Video
product: HP Webcam
vendor: SuYin
physical id: 2
bus info: usb@3:2
version: 1.00
serial: CN0314-OV02-VH-R03.02.02
capabilities: usb-2.00
configuration: driver=uvcvideo maxpower=500mA speed=480.0MB/s

*-disk:0
description: ATA Disk
product: WDC WD2500BEVS-6
vendor: Western Digital
physical id: 0
bus info: scsi@2:0.0.0
logical name: /dev/sda
version: 01.0
serial: WD-WXE807611475
size: 232GiB (250GB)
capabilities: partitioned partitioned:dos
configuration: ansiversion=5 signature=000116f9

[futuroimperfetto]

Hi cdtech and SteveNorman,

Thanks for your quick answers! I have tried running


lshw

and I get


$ lshw
WARNING: you should run this program as super-user.


and then I get a list of of my hardware devices. For three of them I do get indeed a line called "serial", like for the cpu (though it looks a bit weird as a serial):


*-cpu
product: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T7500 @ 2.20GHz
vendor: Intel Corp.
physical id: 1
bus info: cpu@0
version: 6.15.11
serial: 0000-06FB-0000-0000-0000-0000
size: 2201MHz
capacity: 2201MHz
width: 64 bits
capabilities: fpu fpu_exception wp vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe x86-64 constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts pni monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr lahf_lm ida nx cpufreq
configuration: id=1

but for my nVidia card I get


*-display
description: VGA compatible controller
product: GeForce 8400M GS
vendor: nVidia Corporation
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0
version: a1
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: vga_controller bus_master cap_list
configuration: driver=nvidia latency=0 module=nvidia

Now, if I try to run it as a super-user, I don't get anything! I don't know why. Is there an explanation to this? If I do


sudo lshw

or


$sudo su
lshw

I get an empty terminal, with only the following line


PCI (sysfs)

and it seems to run forever, as it does not return me a command line (aka I need to close the terminal). What do you think?

I guess I could try to open the laptop, I have no idea which one the gpu is, but maybe somebody has done it before and I can look it up.