Finding Out the Firmware Version in Linux

In Linux, it is often necessary to check the firmware version of your system. The firmware, also known as BIOS (Basic Input/Output System), is a software that is built into the hardware of your system and serves as an interface between the hardware and the operating system. In this post, we will explore how to check the firmware version in Linux using the dmidecode command.

What is dmidecode?

dmidecode is a command-line tool that is used to retrieve information about your system’s hardware components from the Desktop Management Interface (DMI) table. The DMI table contains information about the system’s hardware components, such as the motherboard, processor, memory, and firmware. The dmidecode command can be used to dump the contents of the DMI table to human-readable format.

If the dmidecode command is not available on your system, you can install it using your distribution’s package manager. You can install dmidecode using the following command:

sudo yum install dmidecode

Or

sudo apt install dmidecode

Checking the Firmware Version using dmidecode

To check the firmware version of your system using dmidecode, you can use the following command:

dmidecode -s bios-version

In this command, the -s option is used to specify the keyword that you want to retrieve from the DMI table. The keyword bios-version specifies the firmware version. The output of this command will be the firmware version of your system.

Example Output from dmidecode

Here’s an example of the output of the dmidecode -s bios-version command:

A05

This output indicates that the firmware version of the system is A05.

By following the steps outlined in this post, you can easily find out the firmware version of your system. Additionally, dmidecode can be used to retrieve other information about your system’s hardware components, which can be useful for system administrators and troubleshooting purposes.