when DMI info like Serial not in hostnamectl output

Thursday, January 22nd, 2026

At a workplace, someone may expect that your Linux distribution, presumed to be some outdated Fedora, will have hostnamectl print out the Serial Number and SKU from Desktop Management Interface (DMI). But they might not expect that your version, an old Ubuntu LTS to Microsoft Intune requirements, doesn’t print these out. Someone may even be hypothetically unhappy about your custom hostname not reflecting the serial number, hindering their every-time workflow. Avoid a feared dozen emails uncomfortably containing your machine ID in the quoted text and step out of their instructions by sending them also the output of sudo dmidecode -t system.

If someone told you to use -H 0x0012, they’re a ThinkPad user.

Tags: linux, superuser
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