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Question: How can I get information about hardware manufacturer, model name, serial number, BIOS information using Linux command line (CLI)?
Answer: You are welcome to use dmidecode which helps to get information about your system’s hardware as described in your system BIOS. That information typically includes system manufacturer, model name, serial number, BIOS version, asset tag as well as a lot of other details depending on the manufacturer.
Beware that DMI data have proven to be too unreliable to be blindly trusted. Dmidecode does not scan your hardware, it only reports what the BIOS told it to. Dmidecode was first written by Alan Cox and is now being further developed and maintained by Jean Delvare. It is released under the General Public License (GPL).
This tool can be easily downloaded from here (source code) or can be installed as binary package included into repositories of many distributions like Debian, Ubuntu, Gentoo. FreeBSD version is also available. Actualy it is reported that dmidecode works well on the following systems:
- Linux i386
- Linux x86_64
- Linux ia64
- FreeBSD i386
- FreeBSD x86_64
- NetBSD i386
- OpenBSD i386
- BeOS i386
- Cygwin i386
- Solaris x86 (CVS version)
In Ubuntu (my favourite distro) just execute the following: sudo aptitude install dmidecode (sample output is here).
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Few days ago I started configuring corporate mail server that should be deployed on OpenBSD and comprise the following features:
- Easy to configure and powerful MTA (Postfix)
- Virtual domains and user accounts (this information is stored in MySQL database)
- Antispam and antivirus checking for all accounts (spamassassin and clamav via amavis-new)
- Secure access to mailboxes through POP3, IMAP and HTTP (squirellmail)
- Secure SMTP server
- Extremal Stability and Security
Actually OpenBSD 4.2 was chosen because of it’s "security by default". Thankfully Daniele Mazzocchio from friendly site www.kernel-panic.it wrote an excellent article about how to build such mail server on this operating system:
Offering a reliable and secure email service is probably one of the top priorities of most system administrators; therefore, in the next chapters, we will build a full-featured mail server, based on open-source software and focusing on security. Read more…
The only thing that is not covered by it is mail content filtering with maildrop and vacation messages that users often ask to set while they are out. Working on it! 
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Date: January 17, 2008. Categories:
unix and tips.
as usual provides us with excellent article about good habits which would help Unix administrators to improve their command line usage efficiency and break away from bad usage patterns in the process. I was impressed by this article and realized my everyday CLI usage is full of "bad patterns". Nice point to give up them and pick up good style.
When you use a system often, you tend to fall into set usage patterns. Sometimes, you do not start the habit of doing things in the best possible way. Sometimes, you even pick up bad practices that lead to clutter and clumsiness. One of the best ways to correct such inadequacies is to conscientiously pick up good habits that counteract them. This article suggests 10 UNIX command-line habits worth picking up -- good habits that help you break many common usage foibles and make you more productive at the command line in the process. Each habit is described in more detail following the list of good habits.
Those 10 good habits to adopt are:
- Make directory trees in a single swipe.
- Change the path; do not move the archive.
- Combine your commands with control operators.
- Quote variables with caution.
- Use escape sequences to manage long input.
- Group your commands together in a list.
- Use
xargs outside of find.
- Know when
grep should do the counting -- and when it should step aside.
- Match certain fields in output, not just lines.
- Stop piping
cats.
Full article is here.
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Exciting news was published today at Jonathan Schwartz' (Chief Executive Officer and President of Sun Microsystems) blog:
We announced big news today - our preliminary results for our fiscal second quarter, and as importantly, that we're acquiring MySQL AB.
…
This puts products like MySQL in an interesting position. They're a part of every web company’s infrastructure, to be sure. And though many of the more traditional companies use MySQL (from auto companies to financial institutions to banks and retailers), many have been waiting for a Fortune 500 vendor willing to step up, to provide mission critical global support.
Read full article here and here (official agreement announcement)…
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VoltaLinux is a GNU/Linux distribution based on Slackware and includes pkgsrc package system from NetBSD. Recently this project released 2.0 version of their distro where any system administrator can enjoy the clean design of Slackware and power of *BSD with the availability of more than 5900 ports ready to be installed. Basically VoltaLinux is intended for servers or small/embedded devices as it requires only 12MB of RAM (it was tested).
I found the idea to cross the power of above mentioned systems quite interesting. You can download VoltaLinux 2.0 ISO from here, installation instructions are the same as for Slackware.
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I came across invaluable article on how to make Linux system that runs OpenSSH server to be even more secure. It’s written by 17-year-old (!!!) Peter Upfold from FOSSwire and covers the following simple steps:
Disable SSH protocol 1- Enable key-based logins
- Don’t enable password-based logins
- Don’t run on port 22
- No remote root logins
I found these tips invaluable and sire that there is no doubt SSH-2 protocol remains the most common and safe method to access remote Linux or Unix system. The article is freely available here.
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Nmap is well known open source tool for security auditing and many other related network exploring activities. Here is it’s developers' description taken from their site:
Nmap uses raw IP packets in novel ways to determine what hosts are available on the network, what services (application name and version) those hosts are offering, what operating systems (and OS versions) they are running, what type of packet filters/firewalls are in use, and dozens of other characteristics. It was designed to rapidly scan large networks, but works fine against single hosts. Nmap runs on all major computer operating systems, and both console and graphical versions are available.
Few days ago latest version 4.50 of this outstanding tool was released celebrating 10 years anniversary. Among notable changes are Zenmap GUI, new generation OS detection, the nmap scripting engine, new host discovery system, advanced 
traceroute and ~ 1500 new version detection signatures. Full changelog is here, binary packages for almost all operating systems (including Linux, BSD, Windows) can be downloaded at project’s download page.
One of major changes in 4.50 is multi-platform Graphical User Interface (GUI) that would be helpful for nmap newbies as well as experienced people. Manual page is here, screenshot is right
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