On a former article I’ve presented 3 command line commands that you can use to get information on your Linux box: lsusb, lspci and lshw, they are really good and I use the first 2 in a lot of situation where I want to check if all my devices works correctly.
Today I’ll propose to you another software that has become popular in this genre: hardinfo, a software designed to be a System Profiler and Benchmark tool, easily usable by everyone and shipped by default by some of the mainstream Linux distributions.
HardInfo can gather information about your system’s hardware and operating system, perform benchmarks, and generate printable reports either in HTML or in plain text formats.
Basic Usage
HardInfo can be launched from ‘System > System information’ (on XFCE). Alternatively the application can be launched from the terminale using the following:
$ hardinfo |
HardInfo looks like this when it is started. Selecting something on the left column will display detailed information about that module.
Clicking “Summary” the top option on the left panel, will gives you a general overview of the hardware and of the installed software of your Linux box, including processor, Memory, operating system name, video resolution and Xorg driver and other information.
After Summary there are many different options and you can literally get every information concerning your system such as
kernel modules, boot history, available languages, mounted file systems, Environment variables, and more.
And if this is not enough for you you can also browse the submenu Device that gives detailed information on the different components or Network that gives information on network adapter and network information such as DNS, route and Mac Address.
Benchmarks
HardInfo can also do some benchmark on your system, it comes with the following benchmark tests:
CPU Blowfish
CPU CryptoHash
CPU Fibonacci
CPU N-Queens
FPU FFT
FPU Raytracing
Highlighting any test and then selecting ‘refresh’ from the top toolbar will rerun any previously completed benchmarks.
Network Update
Another interesting thing of this software is that you can connect to hardinfo database, send your benchmarks and download the public results, so in this way you can compare your computer with other kind of hardware. To do this click on ‘Information > Network Updater..’ will download additional benchmarks for a comparison with the local machine, if you have never run your local benchmark they will be run in this moment:
Once it has finished you’ll have more information and if you select a benchmark you’ll see on the right panel the results of others, Benchmark results will appear ranked from best performing to lowest performing against other systems.
Generate Reports
As last option you can also generate a report of all your hardware or simply some devices.
Simply select ‘Generate Report’ from the top toolbar, a dialogue box will appear allowing you to export all desired computer, device, network or benchmark results to a HTML file. Upon completion an option to open the file immediately for viewing is provided, this is useful if you want to send your computer information to a friend or a technician to get help.
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Good software, but somehow it fails to generate a report, I mean it does, but it’s allways empty. I tried it with Linux Mint (the same as your are using, as I see from the images), to be exact, Linux Mint 14 with Xfce. I tired it from LiveCD, from installed system onto the HD and also from various devices, I allways get the same result.
Do have the same problem or did you had, and if so, how did you managed to resolve it?
Hello,
Yes i run it on my Mint 13 (XFCE edition) with no problems at all.
I can get a report in html format for all the devices.
Strange.
I wasn’t aware of this; thanks for writing about it.
Very helpful, thanks!
Hello:
How can I specify a submodule options, to select or deselect it like the GUI version, using the command-line option of hardinfo to generate a report.
Thanks
Elmer