hwinfo is a command line tool that can be used to get details about various hardware components on a system. It provides information about CPU, RAM, disks, network interfaces, USB controllers, etc.
hwinfo was developed for openSUSE but lately was adapted for other Linux distributions such as Ubuntu, Debian, etc.
This tutorial demonstrates how to install hwinfo on Raspberry Pi.
Use SSH to connect to Raspberry Pi. Then run these commands to update the package lists and install hwinfo:
sudo apt update sudo apt install -y hwinfo
Once the installation is complete, you can check version of the hwinfo with command:
hwinfo --version
Now run the hwinfo command without any arguments to get detailed information about all hardware components:
hwinfo
The same result is provided with –all option as well:
hwinfo --all
Use –short option to get brief information about the hardware components:
hwinfo --short
To get the help about the hwinfo command execute the command given below:
hwinfo --help
Usage: hwinfo [OPTIONS]
Probe for hardware.
Options:
--<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
--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.
Save Information into File
You can save all the information into a file that you displayed by executing the command given below:
hwinfo --all --log hardwareinfo.txt
