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Desktop Management Interface (DMI)
The Desktop Management Task Force (DMTF) was founded in 1992 by a group of leading
computer manufacturers, including Hewlett-Packard, to define a standard method of managing
the physical and logical components of personal computers. The result of these efforts is the
Desktop Management Interface (DMI).
Description of DMI
DMI is basically a set of rules for accessing information about a personal computer. Using DMI,
an application program can determine, for example, which hardware and software components
are present in a personal computer, the operating system that is being used, and the number of
accessory board slots that are available. Using the DMI interface, a local or remote application
program can check what hardware and software components are installed on your computer,
how well they are working, and whether any needs replacing.
All this information is stored in a special Management Information Format (MIF) file, installed on
each personal computer as part of the DMI package. The MIF file specifies information about
components at two levels:
• Groups contain all the information concerning a particular hardware or software
component. If more than one component of the same type is present, as is often the
case with serial ports and hard disk drives, a group is repeated.
• Attributes are specific items of information relating to a group. Attributes of the Mouse
group, for example, include the number of mouse buttons and the name and version
number of the mouse driver being used.
Hewlett-Packard has developed a number of extensions to DMI to allow the enhanced features
of HP OmniBook Notebook PCs to be managed with DMI. These extensions cover:
• Administrator and user passwords.
• Tattooing: a string of characters that uniquely identifies the computer.
Note: The DMI software package included with the OmniBook can only be used with the HP
OmniBook Notebook PC.
For full details of the structure of the MIF file, including an explanation of the meaning of the
fields of groups and attributes and how to write an application program that accesses this
information, you can access the DMTF FTP server ftp.dmtf.org or the DMTF Web Pages at the
URL www.dmtf.org .
Contents of the DMI Package
The DMI software and associated documentation is supplied either pre-installed on the
OmniBook’s hard disk drive or on two flexible disks. The contents of the package are the same
in both cases.
Since the information accessed by the DMI software is specific to a particular computer, it must
be installed on each computer separately.