Imported Upstream version 3.0upstream/3.0

1 files changed, 19 insertions, 2 deletions

diff --git a/man/dmidecode.8 b/man/dmidecode.8
index 9ca2d82..a64cf5d 100644
--- a/man/dmidecode.8
+++ b/man/dmidecode.8
@@ -25,8 +25,12 @@ and developed by the \s-1DMTF\s0 (Desktop Management Task Force).
 
 As you run it,
 .B dmidecode
-will try to locate the \s-1DMI\s0 table. If it succeeds, it will then parse
-this table and display a list of records like this one:
+will try to locate the \s-1DMI\s0 table. It will first try to read the DMI table
+from sysfs, and next try reading directly from memory if sysfs access failed.
+If
+.B dmidecode
+succeeds in locating a valid DMI table, it will then parse this table
+and display a list of records like this one:
 
 Handle 0x0002, DMI type 2, 8 bytes.
 Base Board Information
@@ -89,6 +93,13 @@ keywords is printed and
 .B dmidecode
 exits with an error.
 This option cannot be used more than once.
+
+Note: on Linux, most of these strings can alternatively be read directly
+from
+.BR sysfs ,
+typically from files under
+.IR /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id .
+Most of these files are even readable by regular users.
 .TP
 .BR "-t" ", " "--type TYPE"
 Only display the entries of type \fBTYPE\fR. \fBTYPE\fR can be either a
@@ -119,6 +130,10 @@ later.
 Read the DMI data from a binary file previously generated using 
 \fB--dump-bin\fR.
 .TP
+.BR "  " "  " "--no-sysfs"
+Do not attempt to read DMI data from sysfs files. This is mainly useful for
+debugging.
+.TP
 .BR "-h" ", " "--help"
 Display usage information and exit
 .TP
@@ -234,6 +249,8 @@ The DMI table is located at offset 0x20.
 
 .SH FILES
 .I /dev/mem
+.I /sys/firmware/dmi/tables/smbios_entry_point (Linux only)
+.I /sys/firmware/dmi/tables/DMI (Linux only)
 .SH BUGS
 More often than not, information contained in the \s-1DMI\s0 tables is inaccurate,
 incomplete or simply wrong.