Today I will share with you a tool that can help you check your hardware components and its core configuration settings. This tool is available for all Linux Distributions; Redhat, Centos, Ubuntu, Debian, Solaris, Arch Linux and others. It is a Linux hardware utility which gives detailed information about the hardware installed on your machine.
The name of the utility is lshw. lshw is a small tool to extract detailed information on the hardware configuration of the machine. It can report exact memory configuration, firmware version, mainboard configuration, CPU version and speed, cache configuration, bus speed, etc. on DMI-capable x86 or IA-64 systems and on some PowerPC machines (PowerMac G4 is known to work).
There are other ways you can see hardware configuration of your Linux system like;
- /proc directory, and use of
- lspci: lspci is a utility for displaying information about PCI buses in the system and devices connected to them. By default, it shows a brief list of devices.
Installing lshw package on Linux
The lshw utility is not shipped with base Linux installation. We’ll need to install the package manually and start using it.
Debian / Ubuntu:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install lshwCentOS / Fedora / RHEL / Rocky / AlmaLinux
sudo yum -y install lshwArch / Manjaro / Garuda / EndeavourOS
sudo pacman -Syy lshwCheck Computer Hardware information on Linux using lshw
After installation of lshw tool, we can now use it to check our computer hardware information. The most used command options and formats are:
- -version – print program version
- -html output hardware tree as HTML
- -xml output hardware tree as XML
- -json output hardware tree as a JSON object
- -businfo output bus information
- -short output hardware paths
Let’s consider some examples to demonstrate how this utility works.
Output bus information:
$ sudo lshw -businfo
Bus info Device Class Description
=======================================================
system OpenStack Compute
bus Motherboard
memory 96KiB BIOS
[email protected] processor Intel Core Processor (Haswell, no TSX, IBRS)
[email protected] processor Intel Core Processor (Haswell, no TSX, IBRS)
[email protected] processor Intel Core Processor (Haswell, no TSX, IBRS)
[email protected] processor Intel Core Processor (Haswell, no TSX, IBRS)
memory 8GiB System Memory
memory 8GiB DIMM RAM
[email protected]:00:00.0 bridge 440FX - 82441FX PMC [Natoma]
[email protected]:00:01.0 bridge 82371SB PIIX3 ISA [Natoma/Triton II]
communication PnP device PNP0501
input PnP device PNP0303
input PnP device PNP0f13
storage PnP device PNP0700
system PnP device PNP0b00
[email protected]:00:01.1 storage 82371SB PIIX3 IDE [Natoma/Triton II]
[email protected]:00:01.2 bus 82371SB PIIX3 USB [Natoma/Triton II]
[email protected] usb1 bus UHCI Host Controller
[email protected]:1 input5 input QEMU QEMU USB Tablet
[email protected]:00:01.3 bridge 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 ACPI
[email protected]:00:02.0 /dev/fb0 display GD 5446
[email protected]:00:03.0 network Virtio network device
[email protected] eth0 network Ethernet interface
[email protected]:00:04.0 storage Virtio block device
[email protected] /dev/vda disk 42GB Virtual I/O device
[email protected],1 /dev/vda1 volume 1GiB Linux swap volume
[email protected],2 /dev/vda2 volume 38GiB Linux filesystem partition
[email protected]:00:05.0 generic Virtio memory balloon
[email protected] generic Virtual I/O device
[email protected]:00:06.0 generic Virtio RNG
[email protected] generic Virtual I/O device
input0 input Power Button
input1 input AT Translated Set 2 keyboard
input3 input VirtualPS/2 VMware VMMouse
input4 input VirtualPS/2 VMware VMMouse
input6 input PC SpeakerOutput hardware paths:
$ sudo lshw -short
H/W path Device Class Description
=====================================================
system OpenStack Compute
/0 bus Motherboard
/0/0 memory 96KiB BIOS
/0/400 processor Intel Core Processor (Haswell, no TSX, IBRS)
/0/401 processor Intel Core Processor (Haswell, no TSX, IBRS)
/0/402 processor Intel Core Processor (Haswell, no TSX, IBRS)
/0/403 processor Intel Core Processor (Haswell, no TSX, IBRS)
/0/1000 memory 8GiB System Memory
/0/1000/0 memory 8GiB DIMM RAM
/0/100 bridge 440FX - 82441FX PMC [Natoma]
/0/100/1 bridge 82371SB PIIX3 ISA [Natoma/Triton II]
/0/100/1/0 communication PnP device PNP0501
/0/100/1/1 input PnP device PNP0303
/0/100/1/2 input PnP device PNP0f13
/0/100/1/3 storage PnP device PNP0700
/0/100/1/4 system PnP device PNP0b00
/0/100/1.1 storage 82371SB PIIX3 IDE [Natoma/Triton II]
/0/100/1.2 bus 82371SB PIIX3 USB [Natoma/Triton II]
/0/100/1.2/1 usb1 bus UHCI Host Controller
/0/100/1.2/1/1 input5 input QEMU QEMU USB Tablet
/0/100/1.3 bridge 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 ACPI
/0/100/2 /dev/fb0 display GD 5446
/0/100/3 network Virtio network device
/0/100/3/0 eth0 network Ethernet interface
/0/100/4 storage Virtio block device
/0/100/4/0 /dev/vda disk 42GB Virtual I/O device
/0/100/4/0/1 /dev/vda1 volume 1GiB Linux swap volume
/0/100/4/0/2 /dev/vda2 volume 38GiB Linux filesystem partition
/0/100/5 generic Virtio memory balloon
/0/100/5/0 generic Virtual I/O device
/0/100/6 generic Virtio RNG
/0/100/6/0 generic Virtual I/O device
/1 input0 input Power Button
/2 input1 input AT Translated Set 2 keyboard
/3 input3 input VirtualPS/2 VMware VMMouse
/4 input4 input VirtualPS/2 VMware VMMouse
/5 input6 input PC SpeakerPrint output in:
HTML:
sudo lshw -htmlJSON:
sudo lshw -jsonXML:
sudo lshw -xml
