smbios-lib

A Rust library for reading, parsing, and serializing SMBIOS data from the host system or from a file.

Overview
Installation
Features
CLI usage
Library usage
Security

Overview

This crate reads raw SMBIOS data from the current platform and exposes it through a typed API. It also supports loading SMBIOS tables from a file and dumping raw data to disk.

The crate now targets the DMTF SMBIOS 3.9.0 specification and is designed to be usable both as a library and as a small CLI tool. For a higher-level example application built on top of this crate, see dmidecode-rs.

Installation

Add the crate to your project:

[dependencies]
smbios-lib = "0.9.3"

Or install it with Cargo:

cargo add smbios-lib

Features

Implements all 49 defined structure types from the DMTF SMBIOS 3.9.0 specification (types 0–46, 126, and 127), with extensibility for OEM types 128–255.
Cross-platform support for Linux, Intel macOS , Windows, FreeBSD.
On Linux, reads SMBIOS data from /sys/firmware/dmi/tables (sysfs); on FreeBSD falls back to /dev/mem.
Exposes typed structure accessors for BIOS, system, baseboard, chassis, processor, memory, and all other standard records.
Supports iteration, filtering, and handle-based lookups over SMBIOS entries.
Provides JSON serialization via serde/serde_json.
Includes a CLI binary named smbiosdump.

SMBIOS 3.8 / 3.9 highlights

Processor Information (Type 4): new socket_type field; voltage marked deprecated from 3.8.0; additional ProcessorFamily variants (Intel Core 3/5/7/9, Intel Core Ultra 3/5/7/9, Intel Xeon D, and more).
System Chassis Information (Type 3): new rack_type and rack_height fields; new SpecifiedInRackHeight variant for ChassisHeight.
Memory Device (Type 17): updated fields per 3.9.0.
Management Controller Host Interface (Type 42): expanded protocol record data.
System Slot (Type 9): additional slot type values.

CLI usage

The repository includes a binary that can be used directly from the workspace:

cargo run --bin smbiosdump -- --help

Useful examples:

# Print the full SMBIOS table
cargo run --bin smbiosdump

# Read from a file instead of the host platform
cargo run --bin smbiosdump -- -f /path/to/smbios.bin

# Dump the raw SMBIOS bytes to a file
cargo run --bin smbiosdump -- -o /tmp/smbios.bin

# Query a single SMBIOS string field
cargo run --bin smbiosdump -- -s system-serial-number

# Output the parsed table as JSON
cargo run --bin smbiosdump -- -j

Library usage

The primary entry points are table_load_from_device, load_smbios_data_from_file, and the SMBiosData iterator API.

use smbioslib::*;

fn main() -> Result<(), Box<dyn std::error::Error>> {
    let data = table_load_from_device()?;

    if let Some(uuid) = data.find_map(|sys_info: SMBiosSystemInformation| sys_info.uuid()) {
        println!("System UUID: {}", uuid);
    }

    Ok(())
}

Common patterns include:

find_map to retrieve a single structure instance.
collect::<T>() to gather all entries of a given structure type.
find_by_handle(&handle) to resolve structures that reference one another.
filter(...) and find(...) for targeted searches.

Security

This library follows a strict security stance: never trust the input.

SMBIOS firmware can be inconsistent across vendors and across versions, so the API is designed to return Option-based results and let callers handle missing or malformed data explicitly.

smbios-lib 0.9.4