tux/hw-probe

A tool to probe for hardware and upload result to the Linux Hardware Database

HW PROBE 1.4

Hardware Probe Tool (HW Probe) — a tool to probe for hardware, check its operability and upload result to the Linux hardware database: https://linux-hardware.org

Contents

• About
• Install
• Usage
• AppImage
• Docker
• Live CD
• Snap
• Flatpak
• Inventory
• Offline view
• ACPI dump
• Operability
• Privacy

About

Probe — is a snapshot of your computer's hardware state and system logs. HW Probe tool returns a permanent URL to view the probe of the computer.

Sample probe: https://linux-hardware.org/?probe=b394035f90

Share your probes and logs with Linux developers in order to debug and fix problems on your computer. Simplify inventory of hardware in your company.

You can make a probe of your computer with the help of AppImage, Docker image, Snap, Flatpak, Live CD or RPM/DEB package.

By creating probes you contribute to the "HDD/SSD Real-Life Reliability Test" study: https://github.com/linuxhw/SMART

Install

You can probe your computer by AppImage, Docker image, Snap, Flatpak or Live CD.

Also you can install native RPM/DEB package for your Linux distribution or install from source. See all install instructions in the INSTALL.md file.

Usage

Make a probe:

sudo hw-probe -all -upload -id "DESC"

DESC — any description of the probe.

AppImage

The portable app that runs anywhere, no need to install anything. Just download hw-probe-1.4-129-x86_64.AppImage and run the following command in terminal to probe your computer:

chmod +x ./hw-probe-1.4-129-x86_64.AppImage
sudo ./hw-probe-1.4-129-x86_64.AppImage -all -upload

Supported systems

The app runs on all Linux distributions with Glibc >= 2.14 including:

• Ubuntu 12.04 and later
• Linux Mint 13 and later
• Debian 8 and later
• openSUSE 12.0 and later
• Manjaro 0.8 and later
• ROSA Linux R1 and later
• elementary OS 0.2 and later
• Fedora 15 and later (need to add fuse-libs package to host on Fedora 15, 16 and 17)
• RHEL 7 and later
• CentOS 7 and later
• Mageia 2 and later
• Alt Linux 7 and later
• Gentoo 12 and later
• Sabayon 13 and later
• Slackware 14.2 and later

Docker

You can easily make a probe on any Linux distribution without installing the tool with the help of the Docker image:

sudo docker run -it \
-v /dev:/dev:ro \
-v /lib/modules:/lib/modules:ro \
-v /etc/os-release:/etc/os-release:ro \
-v /var/log:/var/log:ro \
--privileged --net=host --pid=host \
linuxhw/hw-probe -all -upload -id DESC

You may need to run xhost +local: before docker run to collect X11 info (xrandr, xinput, etc.).

Docker hub repository: https://hub.docker.com/r/linuxhw/hw-probe/

Live CD

If the tool is not pre-installed in your system or you have troubles with installing the tool or its dependencies (e.g. hwinfo is not available in the repository) then try this Linux CD with hw-probe installed: https://mirror.yandex.ru/rosa/rosa2016.1/iso/ROSA.Fresh.R10/

Boot this Linux CD on your computer and make a probe (see Usage).

Snap

Download the universal Linux package hw-probe_1.4-2_amd64.snap and install:

sudo snap install ./hw-probe_1.4-2_amd64.snap --dangerous --classic

The hw-probe command should become available on the command line after installation. If not, try:

export PATH=$PATH:/snap/bin

Now you can create computer probes:

sudo hw-probe -all -upload

NOTE: You need a Snap runtime (snapd package) and /snap symlink to /var/lib/snapd/snap (by sudo ln -s /var/lib/snapd/snap /snap) in your system to install and run snaps (pre-installed on Ubuntu 16.04 and Ubuntu 18.04).

Snap Store

The app is available in the Snap Store: https://snapcraft.io/hw-probe

This is a strict snap that runs in a sandbox with limited functionality. It's better to use classic snap (see above) to collect more info about the computer.

Install app from Store:

sudo snap install hw-probe

Connect system interfaces:

for i in hardware-observe mount-observe network-observe \
system-observe upower-observe log-observe raw-usb \
physical-memory-observe opengl;do sudo snap connect hw-probe:$i :$i; done

Now you can create computer probes:

sudo hw-probe -all -upload

Supported systems

• Ubuntu 14.04 and later
• Debian 9 and later
• Fedora 26 and later

Flatpak

Add a remote:

flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://dl.flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo

Install universal package:

flatpak install flathub org.linux_hardware.hw-probe

Now you can create computer probes:

sudo flatpak run org.linux_hardware.hw-probe -all -upload

App Center

Find the Hardware Probe application in your App Center, install it and click on the desktop icon to make a probe. Enable Flatpak plugin if needed (gnome-software-plugin-flatpak package for Debian/Ubuntu).

Flathub

The app is available in the Flathub: https://flathub.org/apps/details/org.linux_hardware.hw-probe

Inventory

Request inventory ID:

hw-probe -get-inventory-id

Mark your probes by this ID:

sudo hw-probe -all -upload -id DESC -inventory-id ID

Find your computers by the inventory ID on this page: https://linux-hardware.org/?view=computers

Offline view

Save your probes HTML view to a directory for offline use:

sudo hw-probe -import DIR

ACPI dump

Dump and decode ACPI table:

sudo hw-probe -all -upload -dump-acpi -decode-acpi

NOTE: "acpica-tools" package should be installed

Operability

The tool checks operability of devices on board by analysis of collected log files. You can perform additional operability sanity tests by the following command:

sudo hw-probe -all -check -upload

The following tests are executed:

• graphics test by glxgears (for both integrated and discrete graphics cards)
• drive read speed test by hdparm (for all HDDs and SSDs)
• CPU performance test by dd and md5sum
• RAM memory test by memtester

Execution time is about 1 min for average modern desktop hardware.

Privacy

Private information (including the username, machine's hostname, IP addresses, MAC addresses and serial numbers) is NOT uploaded to the database.

The tool uploads SHA512 hash of MAC addresses and serial numbers to properly identify unique computers and hard drives. All the data is uploaded securely via HTTPS.

Enjoy!