x86info(1)

💖 x86info — display x86 CPU diagnostics 💖

okay bestie, welcome to x86info(1) from the General Commands Manual — yes the whole thing is literally called that, iconic naming, no notes. this is the little tool that walks up to your x86 CPU and goes "so… tell me everything 👀". let's get into it 🦋

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

x86info [-a] [-c] [-f] [fB-F] [-m] [-mhz] [-r] [?] [--all]
[--cache] [--flags] [--verbose] [--msr] [--mhz] [--registers]
[--help]

(yeah the synopsis and the options list below don't 100% match up, we do not gatekeep, we just report 🫶)

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

this manual page documents x86info, a program that displays a whole range of information about the CPUs chillin' inside an x86 system. like, it's giving "tell me about yourself" but for silicon 💅

and listen — to make full use of this program you need the CPU ID and MSR device drivers in your kernel, with device files you can actually reach at:

• /dev/cpu/<n>/cpuid
• /dev/cpu/<n>/msr

no access to those, no full tea. periodt.

👑 OPTIONS 👑

this program follows the usual GNU command line syntax, with long options starting with two dashes (-). a summary of options is included below. slay, let's go one by one 🔥

• ?, --help — show a summary of options. the "help me help you" move 🙈
• -a, --all — show all the information. literally equivalent to -c -f -m -r -mhz. the full main-character dump 💖
• -c, --cache — show TLB, cache sizes and cache associativity. the receipts on your memory hierarchy ✨
• -f, --flags — show CPU feature flags. all the little yes/no boxes your CPU ticked 🌈
• -m, --msr — dump model specific registers. heads up though: this feature is currently only supported on a few different processors, and future versions will include parsing of bits in MSRs for all processors. so like… sometimes it eats, sometimes it's still loading 😭
• -mhz, --mhz — estimate current clock rate. vibes-based speed check, but make it numbers ⭐
• -mp, --mptable — dump MP table showing CPUs BIOS knows about. the BIOS's version of a group chat roster 💀
• -r, --registers — show register values from all possible cpuid calls. every single one. no crumbs left 🍓
• -s, --show-machine-check — show machine check exception information. the "what went wrong" files 🧚
• -v, --verbose — show verbose descriptions. more words, more lore 💜

💜 AUTHOR 💜

x86info was written by Dave Jones <davej@redhat.com>.

this manual page was written by Mark Brown <broonie@debian.org> for the Debian GNU/Linux system (but may be used by others — she's generous like that 🫶).

permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2.

aaaand that's the whole page bestie 💅 this one came straight outta the General Commands Manual — page x86info(1), that's the source and the version tag, right there in the footer, exactly where it belongs. go read your CPU's whole diary, you've earned it ✨🎀💖