sneep (Serial Number in EEPROM) is a cool utility for Solaris that can retreive the Chasis Serial Number (CSN) or the Product Serial Number (PSN). This comes real handy when taking inventory or when having to work with Sun Support. sneep can also store useful information like system Assett Tag or Location into the EEPROM which can be retreived later on.
Sneep searches for the serial number in several data sources, including the system eeprom, platform-specific hardware-based sources, the configuration files for the Sun “explorer” and “Configuration Service Tracker (CST)” tools, and its own backup file. This order of searched can be altered.
Display Serial Number
To simply display the serial number run sneep with no arguements
# sneep
0011223344
To display the serial number and its associated tag in the EEPROM and infact all stored Tag/Value pairs.
# sneep -T
“ChassisSerialNumber” “0011223344”
Store Information in EEPROM
To store information into the EEPROM like the asset tag use the “-t” to set the tag name and the “-s” option to set its value as below:
# sneep -t “AssetTag” -s 001234
To display all information
# sneep -T
“AssetTag” “001234”
“ChassisSerialNumber” “0011223344”
Install Sneep
Sneep is not installed by default in Solaris. Click here to download the latest version of Sneep utility. (requires a sunsolve account)
Install as follows from the directory where the sneep package (SUNWsneep) is downloaded to:
# uncompress SUNWsneep2.6.tar.Z
# tar -xvf SUNWsneep2.6.tar
# pkgadd -d . SUNWsneep
To confirm the installation
# pkginfo -l SUNWsneep
PKGINST: SUNWsneep
NAME: Serial Number in EEPROM
CATEGORY: service
ARCH: sparc,i386
VERSION: 2.6
BASEDIR: /opt/SUNWsneep
VENDOR: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
DESC: Persistent, software-accesible storage of Chassis Serial Number (CSN) across OS and application changes. Works on all Sun platforms. Can also store and retrieve arbitrary other values in EEPROM.
PSTAMP: cvs-sustain-build20080930010154
INSTDATE: Jun 04 2009 17:22
HOTLINE: Support provided through normal Sun support channels
EMAIL: sneep-support@sun.com
STATUS: completely installed
FILES: 25 installed pathnames
5 directories
3 executables
1315 blocks used (approx)
If you didn’t accept to create a link file in /usr/sbin during the pkgadd, add a symbolic link as follows;
# ln -s /opt/SUNWsneep/bin/sneep .
To check the man page
# man -M /opt/SUNWsneep/man sneep
For command help
# sneep -h
Save and retrieve Chassis Serial Number ( CSN ) using EEPROM.
usage:
sneep [-aFhlTvVx] [-t tag] [-s setting ] [-P ds1:ds2…] \
[-d default] [-o separator]
setcsn -c serialnumber
showplatform -p csn-h This help message
For detailed information, consult the man page. Try
man -M /opt/SUNWsneep/man sneep
Thanks for telling your readers about sneep; I’m glad that it has been useful to you.
In your tutorial here, you have an optional step in which you show how to create a symbolic link to sneep, and that will work just fine.
I thought that I would mention that sneep includes a utility which can do this for you, and the link is registered as part of sneep so that it is removed if the package is removed.
$ /opt/SUNWsneep/bin/add_sneep_to_bin [directory]
By default, a link to sneep is placed in /usr/sbin unless a directory name is given.
Would this work on Sun 9? I do have it installed in a Sun 10.. but I want it to work in other old servers.
Thanks, but, Unfortunately it does not work on my Ultra 45 (with Solaris 10 installed)
Thanks for the info.It helped to know the serial no.
# ./usr/sbin/eeprom
will show the chasis serial number
# showplatform -p csn will show the Chasis Serial number while eeprom will show only if nvramrc is set to true.