[techtalk] how to get hardware specs

[Jamie Walker]

alissa bader wrote:

> I am trying to figure out what type of hardware, how
> much disk space, how much ram etc is on a box.  I know
> if I was doing this on a mac I'd click on "about this
> macintosh."  I know if I was doing this on an NT
> machine, I'd check out the properties under "My
> Computer."
> 
> Someone told me dmesg would do it, but all I get is a
> garbled bunch of infomation.

Unfortunately dmesg is one of the best places to get this sort of stuff,
because it's about the *only* place where information about multiple
types of hardware ends up. If your machine has been up for a long time
the boot messages have likely cycled off, but Redhat and Mandrake in
particular (and likely others that I don't have personal experience of)
save the output at boot time to /var/log/dmesg. Let's look at mine (I
won't fill the email with the whole thing):

> Detected 498760787 Hz processor.

It's not quite a round number, but I have a 500MHz CPU.

> Memory: 192596k/196544k available (1208k kernel code, 416k reserved, 2252k data, 72k init, 0k bigmem)

I have 192MB of RAM.

> CPU: Intel Celeron (Mendocino) stepping 05

My CPU is an Intel Celeron.

> ttyS00 at 0x03f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
> ttyS01 at 0x02f8 (irq = 3) is a 16550A
> ttyS03 at 0x02e8 (irq = 3) is a 16550A

This is telling me I have three serial ports (they equate to COM1, COM2,
and COM4 in DOS). Unfortunately what it doesn't say is that the first
two are actual serial ports, the third is a modem.

> hda: ST32520A, 2405MB w/0kB Cache, CHS=611/128/63
> hdb: QUANTUM FIREBALLP KA13.6, 13216MB w/371kB Cache, CHS=1684/255/63
> hdc: ATAPI 40X CD-ROM drive, 128kB Cache

I have two hard drives, one a 2.5gb, and one a 13gb, and a 40X CD-ROM
drive. hda and hdb are on the primary IDE channel, hdc and hdd are the
second, so, the two hard drives are sharing a channel and the CD-ROM has
one to itself.

You can also use the lspci command which should be on most distros
(Mandrake and Redhat have it, anyway):

> 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 440BX/ZX - 82443BX/ZX Host bridge (rev 03)
> 00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 440BX/ZX - 82443BX/ZX AGP bridge (rev 03)

These tell me my motherboard is based on the Intel BX chipset.

> 00:07.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82371AB PIIX4 ISA (rev 02)
> 00:07.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82371AB PIIX4 IDE (rev 01)
> 00:07.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82371AB PIIX4 USB (rev 01)
> 00:07.3 Bridge: Intel Corporation 82371AB PIIX4 ACPI (rev 02)

These don't say much of note other than confirming it's an Intel based
motherboard.

> 00:0a.0 Ethernet controller: Digital Equipment Corporation DECchip 21140 [FasterNet] (rev 22)

My network card is using a DEC chip, it's Tulip based but this doesn't
actually say so.

> 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation Riva TnT2 [NV5] (rev 11)                                                   

My video card is a TNT2.

There are various utilities around that collate some of this stuff,
there's one somewhere in GNOME I believe, but I wouldn't remember how to
find it.

-- 
Email: jamiew at clear.net.nz  ICQ: 5632563  or shout loudly