System serial number

royce.williams

I just noticed a cool new feature – the display of an overall system serial number in the main status dashboard. Unless I missed it earlier, it first showed up in 2.3.2-p1.

For people running real pfSense Store hardware, a real serial number will be displayed, I expect. :) On my generic system, the serial is a generic one:

(if the remote image is ever removed, that serial is currently GXXXX301XXXXX).

This new feature isn't currently mentioned in the release notes for 2.3.2-p1. I assume that different characters in the string will denote different models, etc.?

I'm curious about what will the different possible codes be, and what we can learn from them.

kpa

On my system it shows the exact value of kern.hostuuid sysctl which is a UUID that gets randomly generated on first boot after installation.

royce.williams

Interesting. Is your system from the pfSense store?

royce.williams

I just checked and my kern.hostuuid sysctl is populated like yours, but that is unrelated to what I'm seeing on the dashboard.

kpa

It's a self-built machine so there's no real H/W serialnumber on it.

jwt

@Royce:

This new feature isn't currently mentioned in the release notes for 2.3.2-p1. I assume that different characters in the string will denote different models, etc.?

I'm just going to quote from the page you listed:

The hardware serial number is now displayed in the system information widget, or a host UUID if a serial number is not found. This is for display purposes and facilitates users seeking support in identifying their hardware.

Fourth major bullet point.

royce.williams

The wiki was updated after I started this thread. I used the phrase "isn't currently mentioned" on purpose. :)

Wikis are fluid, and I appreciate the add. I'd still be interested in knowing more about how the serial numbers are detected and used. I am definitely not using pfSense-supplied hardware, but instead of showing a UUID as I would expect, I'm getting a generic-ish serial number.

phil.davis

A bit more info is here: https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=118859.msg658363#msg658363

It uses:

/bin/kenv smbios.system.serial

Try that command on your system, if it returns something then that is what will be displayed, otherwise it moves on to get and display the UUID.

royce.williams

Ah, it's the SMBIOS serial? OK, that makes sense now. My pfSense serial does indeed match the underlying SMBIOS for the board.

Thanks - very informative!

jahonix

Well, one of my test systems now shows:

Netgate APU	
Serial: 655dc6...

While the APU part is correct, this device has never seen Netgate.
Technically correct would be: PC Engines, APU