Welcome to my world

I recently needed to get a load of Dell service tags from some remote servers. Dell very nicely provide a ActiveX component for Windows but nothing for Linux. Fortunately we can use dmidecode. Run it as root and it will output loads of hardware info. If you looking for something specific, then you can run it with -s option and provide a keyword such as:

• bios-vendor
• bios-version
• bios-release-date
• system-manufacturer
• system-product-name
• system-version
• system-serial-number
• system-uuid
• baseboard-manufacturer
• baseboard-product-name
• baseboard-version
• baseboard-serial-number
• baseboard-asset-tag
• chassis-manufacturer
• chassis-type
• chassis-version
• chassis-serial-number
• chassis-asset-tag
• processor-family
• processor-manufacturer
• processor-version
• processor-frequency

Here’s the output of it:

[root@ajd-laptop ~]# dmidecode -s bios-vendor
Dell Inc.
[root@ajd-laptop ~]# dmidecode -s processor-manufacturer
Intel
[root@ajd-laptop ~]# dmidecode -s processor-frequency
1600 MHz
[root@ajd-laptop ~]# dmidecode -s chassis-type
Portable

I’m planning on entering this blog for “The World’s most neglected blog” Award. I think I’ve got a pretty good chance. My acceptance speech will include the following excuses:

• I was too busy (True, more to come on that later)
• Nothing exciting has happened to be recently (Not true – More to come on that soon)
• I haven’t got anything useful to say (Always true, but it’s never stopped me before!)

Didn’t see that one coming. Blog contains details to what this could mean for both companies. May as well be one of the most important takeovers of 2008 already!

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Wahoo! I finally got around to doing our wedding website. There’s not a lot on it at the moment, but more will come later. Feel free to take a poke around www.joandadamswedding.co.uk.

As you probably guessed, I love Linux in all it’s distros. OK, maybe I have a small hatred for Ubuntu but that because of the fan boy users thinking they invented everything. Anyway, I also know that all Linux users harbour a dark secret. A secret we’ve tried to keep quite for many years. A secret that if we actually admitted all Windows users would laugh and kick sand in our faces. Well I’m not scared! The secret is…. Linux driver support isn’t as good as Windows. You know that new feedback steering wheel – probably won’t work. That sexy new Laptop card reader – Wouldn’t hold your breath.

We’ve just got a shiny new Brother MFC-7820N printer/copier/fax/coffee maker in the office. Great, I thought, the printing will be fine as it’s postscript but I probably won’t be able to use the scanner or the fax part over the network. I’m OK with that and I don’t want to make a fuss else the M$ boys might get wind of our dirty little secret.

So when it arrived, it was with some trepidation I poking around the Brother website and found a Linux section. CUPS drivers, SANE drivers, LPR fax drivers. Wahoo! Even better when I went to install the printer in cups avahi had already spotted it and installed it. The SANE drivers are supplied as a couple of RPMs and a single line to activate then it works just like any other SANE driver. The fax part isn’t quite as polished, but still works. Absolutely amazing. I really am impressed with Brother. The whole ‘install’ took around 30 seconds.

The best thing about all of this was that when we tried to install everything on Windows, it too about 30 minutes to install and then uses a nasty GUI and tray service.