Summary

This webpage provides a comprehensive guide to using various Linux commands for checking hardware and system information.

Abstract

The webpage discusses several Linux commands for checking hardware and system information. These commands include "uname -m" and "uname -a" for printing machine hardware names, "lscpu" for reporting CPU and processing unit information, "lshw" for detailed and brief information about multiple hardware components, "hwinfo" for reporting more detailed information than "lshw", "lspci" for listing out PCI buses and devices connected to them, "lsscsi" for listing SCSI/SATA devices, "lsusb" for showing USB controllers and connected device details, "lsblk" for block device information, "df" for reporting various partitions, their mount points, and used and available space on each, "fdisk" for modifying and listing partition information, "mount" for viewing mounted file systems, "dmidecode" for extracting hardware information by reading data from the SMBOIS data structures, "/proc files" for obtaining information about hardware and configurations, "hdparm" for getting information about SATA devices, "inxi" for generating a good-looking report with hardware details from multiple sources, and "ZAI.chat" as a cost-effective AI service alternative to ChatGPT Plus.

Bullet points

The webpage provides a guide to Linux commands for checking hardware and system information.
Commands discussed include "uname -m", "uname -a", "lscpu", "lshw", "hwinfo", "lspci", "lsscsi", "lsusb", "lsblk", "df", "fdisk", "mount", "dmidecode", "/proc files", "hdparm", and "inxi".
Each command provides specific hardware and system information.
"ZAI.chat" is recommended as a cost-effective alternative to ChatGPT Plus.

Basic Linux Commands to Check Hardware and System Information

Once the Linux kernel initializes, it enumerates all hardware components. There are plenty of commands to check information about the hardware of a Linux system. Some commands report only specific hardware components like CPU or memory while the rest cover multiple hardware units.

1. Printing Machine Hardware Name (uname –m uname –a)

Using the -m switch with the uname command prints the hardware name of our machine. If we want the uname command to print all the information mentioned above, we can use the command with all the switches.

$ uname –m

$ uname -a

2. lscpu

The lscpu command reports information about the cpu and processing units. It does not have any further options or functionality.

$ lscpu

lshw –List Hardware

A general purpose utility, that reports detailed and brief information about multiple different hardware units such as cpu, memory, disk, usb controllers, network adapters etc. Lshw extracts the information from different /proc files. Lshw is capable of reporting memory configuration, firmware version, mainboard configuration, CPU version and speed, cache configuration, bus speed etc. The lshw command needs to run with super privileges to be able to detect and report the maximum amount of information. So run as root, or use sudo. Lshw assorts hardware components into groups called “class”. Processor, memory, display, network, storage are all different classes.

$ sudo lshw $ sudo lshw –short

Generate report in html/xml format

We can also export lshw reports in html, xml and json formats.

$ sudo lshw –html > lshw-output.html

$ sudo lshw –xml >lshw-output.xml

2. hwinfo- Hardware Information

Hwinfo is another general purpose hardware probing utility that can report detailed and brief information about multiple different hardware components, and more than what lshw can report.

$ hwinfo

$ hwinfo –short

3. lspci- List PCI

The lspci command lists out all the pci buses and details about the devices connected to them. The vga adapter, graphics card, network adapter, usb ports, sata controllers, etc all fall under this category. By using previous lspci command with the -v parameter more detailed information about the PCI devices can get.

$ lspci

4. lsscsi-List sci devices

Lists outs the scsi/sata devices like hard drives and optical drives. SCSI is another popular BUS used to connect different type of devices to the Linux systems. SCSI interface devices are pricier than PCI because they are generally used in enterprise server hardware. SCSI information similar to the PCI can be listed with the following command.

$ lsscsi

5. lsusb- List usb buses and device details

This command shows the USB controllers and details about devices connected to them. By default brief information is printed. We can use the verbose option “-v” to print detailed information about each usb port. The lsusb command fetches and prints detailed USB controllers information along with the connected hardware.

$ lsusb

6. lsblk- List block devices

The lsblk command fetches detailed block device information such as your hard drives, flash drives, and their partitions.

$ lsblk

7. df-disk space of file systems

Reports various partitions, their mount points and the used and available space on each.

$ df -H

8. fdisk

Fdisk is a utility to modify partitions on hard drives, and can be used to list out the partition information as well. File system information can be gathered by using fdisk command. Although fdisk can be used for creating partitions, file systems and other disk-related media also provides file system information with the -l parameter.

$ sudo fdisk –l

9. mount

The mount is used to mount/unmount and view mounted file systems. Again, we can use grep to filter out only those file systems that we want to see.

$ mount | column -t

10. Dmidecode

The dmidecode command is different from all other commands. It extracts hardware information by reading data from the SMBOIS data structures (also called DMI tables). # display information about the processor/cpu

$ sudo dmidecode -t processor # memory/ram information

$ sudo dmidecode -t memory # bios details

$ sudo dmidecode -t bios

11. /proc files

Many of the virtual files in the /proc directory contain information about hardware and configurations. Here are some of them: 

CPU/Memory information

$ cat /proc/cpuinfo

Version

$ cat /proc/version

SCSI/Sata devices

$ cat /proc/scsi/scsi 

Partitions

$ cat /proc/partitions

12. hdparm

The hdparm command gets information about sata devices like hard disks. Each of the command has a slightly different method of extracting information.

We may need to try more than one of them, while looking for specific hardware details. They are available across most linux distros, and can be easily installed from the default repositories. On the desktop there are gui tools, for those who do not want to memorise and type commands. Hardinfo, I-nex are some of the popular ones that provide detailed information about multiple different hardware components.

$ hdparm

13. Inxi

Inxi is a 10K line mega bash script that fetches hardware details from multiple different sources and commands on the system and generates a good looking report that non-technical users can read easily.

$ inxi –Fx