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
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):
