HWINFO(8)

💅 HWINFO(8) — System configuration, but make it cute 💅

okay so welcome to the hwinfo(8) manual page, bestie — this is the System configuration corner and we're about to probe for hardware together. No cap, it's giving "detective but for devices" 🔍💖

✨ NAME ✨

hwinfo — probe for hardware. That's the whole vibe: it finds out what hardware is chillin' in your system. 🫶

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

hwinfo [ OPTIONS ]

💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

hwinfo is used to probe for the hardware present in the system. It can be used to generate a system overview log which can be later used for support. So yeah, it's the "what's in my computer?" tool, and the log it makes is lowkey perfect for support later. 💖

🌸 OPTIONS 🌸

big note first: running hwinfo without any options is roughly equivalent to hwinfo --all --log=-. Slay.

• --<HARDWARE_ITEM> — This option can be given more than once. Probe for a particular HARDWARE_ITEM. Available hardware items are: all, arch, bios, block, bluetooth, braille, bridge, camera, cdrom, chipcard, cpu, disk, dsl, dvb, fingerprint, floppy, framebuffer, gfxcard, hub, ide, isapnp, isdn, joystick, keyboard, memory, mmc-ctrl, modem, monitor, mouse, netcard, network, partition, pci, pcmcia, pcmcia-ctrl, pppoe, printer, redasd, reallyall, scanner, scsi, smp, sound, storage-ctrl, sys, tape, tv, uml, usb, usb-ctrl, vbe, wlan, xen, zip. Note that if this option is missing, no hardware probing will be done! literally none. ⚠️
• --short — Show only a summary. Use this option in addition to a hardware probing option.
• --listmd — Normally hwinfo does not report RAID devices. Add this option to see them.
• --only DEVNAME — This option can be given more than once. If you add this option only entries in the device list matching DEVNAME will be shown. Note that you also have to specify --<HARDWARE_ITEM> to trigger any device probing.
• --save-config SPEC — Store config for a particular device below /var/lib/hardware. SPEC can be a device name, an UDI, or 'all'. This option must be given in addition to a hardware probing option.
• --show-config UDI — Show saved config data for a particular device.
• --map — If disk names have changed (e.g. after a kernel update) this prints a list of disk name mappings. Note that you must have used --save-config at some point before for this can work.
• --debug N — Set debug level to N. The debug info is shown only in the log file. If you specify a log file, the debug level is implicitly set to a reasonable value (N is a bitmask of individual flags).
• --verbose — Increase verbosity. Only together with --map.
• --log FILE — Write log info to FILE. Don't forget to also specify --<HARDWARE_ITEM> to trigger any device probing.
• --dump-db N — Dump hardware data base. N is either 0 for the external data base in /var/lib/hardware, or 1 for the internal data base.
• --version — Print libhd version.
• --help — Print usage.

🍓 ENVIRONMENT 🍓

hwprobe can hold a comma-separated list of probing flags preceded by + or - to be turned on or off. To get a complete list of supported flags, run hwinfo -all (note: not --all) and look at the top of the output.

hwinfo also looks at /proc/cmdline for a hwprobe option.

🎀 EXAMPLES 🎀

• show all disks

hwinfo --disk

• just an overview

hwinfo --short --block

• show a particular disk

hwinfo --disk --only /dev/sdb

• save disk config state

hwinfo --disk --save-config=all

• try 4 graphics card ports for monitor data (default: 3)

hwprobe=bios.ddc.ports=4 hwinfo --monitor

• monitor detection runs the Video BIOS to get the monitor data; dump a complete BIOS code execution trace to the log

hwprobe=bios.ddc.ports=1,x86emu=trace:dump:trace.only=0:dump.only=0
hwinfo --monitor --log=foo

🧚 FILES 🧚

• /var/lib/hardware/hd.ids — External hardware data base (in readable text form). Try the --dump-db option to see the format.
• /var/lib/hardware/udi — Directory where persistent config data are stored (see --save-config option).

💀 BUGS 💀

Not all hardware can be detected. 😭

🔥 SEE ALSO 🔥

More documentation in /usr/share/doc/packages/hwinfo. Source repository: git@github.com:openSUSE/hwinfo.git.

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Signed off with love: this is the hwinfo source/version, dated June 2016, and you're reading HWINFO(8). Bye bestie 💖✨