Setting VirtualBox SMBIOS Settings to match your PC

In some cases you may want your VM to emulate your physical machine.  For example, if you want to set the Serial Number/Service Tag to match your laptop, you can do this with the following steps:

1. sudo dmidecode -t system
2. VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiSystemSerial" "#######"

In Step two above, you would not use the #######, but instead use the Serial Number displayed when running dmidecode.

Essentially what we are doing is configuring the SMBIOS (System Management BIOS) on the VirtualMachine to have the same strings/settings as the actual PC.  This can be useful in a scenario in which you are running some software within a virtual machine that expects the hardware to be of a specific vendor or serial number.

More information about the SMBIOS can be found here:

http://www.dmtf.org/sites/default/files/standards/documents/DSP0134_2.7.1.pdf

More information about setting VirtualBox VM SMBIOS data can be found here:

http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch09.html#changedmi

And last, more information about how to use dmidecode on your Linux PC can be found here:

https://linux.die.net/man/8/dmidecode

This technique can be used to "spoof" the VM's Product ID, Serial Number, BIOS Version, Manufacturer and really any other SMBIOS value.

DISCLAIMER:

I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY MISUSE OF SOFTWARE COPYRIGHT LAWS RESULTING FROM THE USE OF THIS INFORMATION