Linux hardware management

Command	Description
dmidecode	Produces information a about BIOS, motherboard, etc.
lscpu	CPU information
lsmem	Breaks down memory allocation
lspci	Lists PCI-connected devices
lsusb	Lists connected USB devices
lshw	Provides a detailed breakdown of components

Hardware information

dmidecode

This command provides hardware information by pulling data from the DMI¹ table. It includes information about the BIOS, Motherboards, CPU, and Memory of the computer.

We can also use dmidecode to get specific information about different parts of the computer:

Example

sudo dmidecode -t processor

The -t flag specifies the type of data we want to retrieve. The output will be a detailed set of data, such as:

# dmidecode 3.6
Getting SMBIOS data from sysfs.
SMBIOS 3.3.0 present.
Handle 0x0016, DMI type 4, 48 bytes
Processor Information
  Socket Designation: AM4
  Type: Central Processor
  Family: Zen
  Manufacturer: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
  ID: 12 0F A2 00 FF FB 8B 17
  Signature: Family 25, Model 33, Stepping 2

Another example is to use dmidecode -t memory, which will return a list of Memory devices (often data about the RAM sticks installed, and other physical information):

➤ sudo dmidecode -t memory
# dmidecode 3.6
Getting SMBIOS data from sysfs.
SMBIOS 3.3.0 present.
 
Handle 0x0010, DMI type 16, 23 bytes
Physical Memory Array
	Location: System Board Or Motherboard
	Use: System Memory
	Error Correction Type: None
	Maximum Capacity: 128 GB
	Error Information Handle: 0x000F
	Number Of Devices: 2
 
Handle 0x0018, DMI type 17, 92 bytes
Memory Device
	Array Handle: 0x0010
	Error Information Handle: 0x0017
	Total Width: 64 bits
...

lscpu

This provides a structured summary of our CPU. It will be more detailed that the general specifications returned by dmidecode; additionally, if we want information on each core we can use lscpu -e (-e stands for “extended”).

The extended command will gives us the following:

CPU	NODE	SOCKET	CORE	L1d:L1i:L2:L3	ONLINE
Logical processor number	Non-Uniform Memory Access node	Physical processor socket	Core number within the socket	CPU cache sizes	Whether the CPU is active or not

Note

NUMA is an architecture designed to optimise memory access in multi-socket or multi-threaded configurations.

lsmem

Just like dmidecode can provide CPU data at the hardware level and lscpu can provided more specific information about the processor, lsmem is used to retrieve data about the allocation and structure of memory in the system, rather than the hardware components of memory:

➤ lsmem
RANGE                                 SIZE  STATE REMOVABLE  BLOCK
0x0000000000000000-0x00000000bfffffff   3G online       yes   0-23
0x0000000100000000-0x000000083fffffff  29G online       yes 32-263
 
Memory block size:                128M
Total online memory:               32G
Total offline memory:               0B

Column	Description
RANGE	Describes the memory range covered by each block of memory
SIZE	Hopw much memory is available
STATE	Whether the memory devices is online
REMOVABLE	Whether the device can be hot-swapped
BLOCK	The datablock that this device uses

Hardware inventory

Hardware inventory commands help identify what hardware is installed from internal components of the computer, including stuff like GPUs, network cards, and USB drives, etc.

lspci

This command will show us what is connected to our motherboard through PCI. To view a more structured version we can use lspci -tv to understand how the devices are connected:

-[0000:00]-+-00.0  Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Starship/Matisse Root Complex
           +-01.0  Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Starship/Matisse PCIe Dummy Host Bridge
           +-01.1-[01]----00.0  Kingston Technology Company, Inc. A2000 NVMe SSD [SM2263EN]
           +-01.2-[02-05]--+-00.0  Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] 500 Series Chipset USB 3.1 XHCI Controller
           |               +-00.1  Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] 500 Series Chipset SATA Controller
           |               \-00.2-[03-05]--+-00.0-[04]----00.0  Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8211/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller
           |                               \-01.0-[05]----00.0  Intel Corporation Dual Band Wireless-AC 3168NGW [Stone Peak]

The data in brackets [0000:00] represents the PCI bus being used (the root bus, in this case):

Field	Description
[0000:00]	The PCI bus (root in this case)
+- symbols	Hierarchy - whether the device is connected to a specific controller
00.0, 01.0, etc	The specific device address of the component
Text	What the device is and the manufacturer

lsusb

This will give us a list of all the devices connected via USB, along with the manufacturer and device ID:

➤ lsusb
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 26ce:01a2 ASRock LED Controller
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 8087:0aa7 Intel Corp. Wireless-AC 3168 Bluetooth
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

The output from this command is similar to lspci, in that the first part shows us the specific device number and the bus it is connected to.

Example

In my computer I have a USB hub plugged in. As a result we can see that device 001 has multiple busses:

Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

The next column is the ID and vendor of the device. For example:

Bus 005 Device 005: ID 046d:c52b Logitech, Inc. Unifying Receiver

Here the ID of the device includes a vendor ID before the colon identifying it as Logitech (which is always 046d) along with the Logitech-assigned product code (c52b in this case). This is not unlike MAC addresses and their classification.

lshw

While lspci and lsusb focus on specific devices types, lshw provides a full system report, including information provided by the other two commands. Often used to find extact information about the machine. The data can be trimmed with -short:

H/W path            Device        Class          Description
============================================================
                                  system         Computer
/0                                bus            Motherboard
/0/0                              memory         32GiB System memory
/0/1                              processor      AMD Ryzen 7 5700X 8-Core Processor
/0/100                            bridge         Starship/Matisse Root Complex
/0/100/1.1                        bridge         Starship/Matisse GPP Bridge
/0/100/1.1/0        /dev/nvme0    storage        KINGSTON SA2000M81000G

Column	Description
H/W path	Hardware hierarchy in the system
Device column	Associated device file
Class	Hardware type (based on dmidecode)
Description	Human-readable component name

Footnotes

1. This is known as the Desktop Management Interface table ↩