HWINFO

Section: System configuration (8)
Updated: June 2009
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NAME

hwinfo - probe for hardware

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.

OPTIONS

Note that running hwinfo without any options is roughly equivalent to 'hwinfo --all --log=-'.

--<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, 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
--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 data about devices with DEVNAME will be shown.
--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.
--verbose: Increase verbosity. Only together with --map.
--log FILE: Write log info to FILE.
--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

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.