NAME¶
vpd
—
Vital Product Data kernel interface
SYNOPSIS¶
device vpd
DESCRIPTION¶
IBM ThinkPad notebooks (and most IBM desktop PCs) have a 48-byte Vital Product
Data (VPD) structure located in the BIOS Shadow RAM.
The VPD provides machine type and model information, the build ID (this is
roughly the BIOS version) and serial number information.
The
vpd
driver scans the BIOS area and claims
the memory used by the VPD structure. It provides the
sysctl(3) branch
hw.vpd to allow this information to be
accessed by the userland. The following variables are provided, one per VPD
attachment (there should only be one):
MACHINE_TYPE
- (machine.type) Machine type.
MACHINE_MODEL
- (machine.model) Machine model.
BUILD_ID
- (build.id) BIOS Build ID.
SERIAL_BOX
- (serial.box) Box Serial Number.
SERIAL_PLANAR
- (serial.planar) Motherboard Serial
Number.
SEE ALSO¶
TP General - Using the BIOS Build
ID to identify IBM ThinkPad systems, Reference #:
MIGR-45120,
http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=psg1MIGR-45120,
November 22, 2002.
HISTORY¶
The
vpd
driver first appeared in
FreeBSD 5.1.
AUTHORS¶
The
vpd
driver and this manual page were
written by
Matthew N. Dodd
⟨mdodd@FreeBSD.org⟩.