Extract Linux serial number without sudo

Question

Is it possible to extract the Linux serial number without using sudo?

I know that this can be done on Windows: wmic bios get serialnumber and on MAC OS system_profiler |grep "r (system)" Both of them do not require root settings.

On Linux, this can be used: sudo dmidecode -s system-serial-number , but it needs sudo. Is there another way?

thanks

Answer 1

dmidecode reads this information from physical memory using /dev/mem , which requires root.

The same information is provided by the Linux kernel via sysfs in the virtual directory /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id .

Unfortunately, someone decided that all the information in this virtual directory is open for reading, and NOT serial numbers:

 $ ls -l /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id -r--r--r-- 1 root root 4096 Nov 25 17:12 bios_date -r--r--r-- 1 root root 4096 Nov 14 14:59 bios_vendor -r--r--r-- 1 root root 4096 Nov 25 17:12 bios_version -r--r--r-- 1 root root 4096 Nov 25 17:12 board_asset_tag -r--r--r-- 1 root root 4096 Nov 25 17:12 board_name -r-------- 1 root root 4096 Nov 25 17:12 board_serial -r--r--r-- 1 root root 4096 Nov 14 14:59 board_vendor -r--r--r-- 1 root root 4096 Nov 25 17:12 board_version -r--r--r-- 1 root root 4096 Nov 25 17:12 chassis_asset_tag -r-------- 1 root root 4096 Nov 25 17:12 chassis_serial -r--r--r-- 1 root root 4096 Nov 25 17:12 chassis_type -r--r--r-- 1 root root 4096 Nov 25 17:12 chassis_vendor -r--r--r-- 1 root root 4096 Nov 25 17:12 chassis_version -r--r--r-- 1 root root 4096 Nov 25 17:12 modalias drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 0 Nov 25 17:12 power -r--r--r-- 1 root root 4096 Nov 14 14:59 product_name -r-------- 1 root root 4096 Nov 25 17:12 product_serial -r-------- 1 root root 4096 Nov 14 14:59 product_uuid -r--r--r-- 1 root root 4096 Nov 14 14:59 product_version lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Nov 14 14:59 subsystem -> ../../../../class/dmi -r--r--r-- 1 root root 4096 Nov 14 14:59 sys_vendor -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4096 Nov 14 14:59 uevent 

If you can install the hal package (not installed by default in recent versions of Ubuntu), this command will work for you as non-root:

  lshal | grep system.hardware.serial system.hardware.serial = '<serial_number>' (string) 

This works because the hal package installs a hald daemon that runs as root and collects this data, which allows lshal to read it as non-root.