Hardware and Devices

by Dan Aukes

Device / driver info

lsmod
lspci -k
dmesg
lsusb
usb-devices
udevadm info

Devices

sudo libinput --list-devices

Learn about your hardware

Get DMI/BIOS information

sudo dmidecode 
sudo dmidecode -t0 # BIOS
sudo dmidecode -t1 # System
sudo dmidecode -t2 # Board
sudo dmidecode -t3 # Enclosure or Chassis
sudo dmidecode -t4 # Processor
sudo dmidecode -t1 # System

Drives

Hard drive information

list disks with lsblk

lsblk -f #list filesystem details
lsblk -t #show topology
lsblk -i # use ascii
lsblk -o NAME,UUID # show specific columns
sudo lshw -class disk
sudo fdisk -l
sudo hwinfo --disk
ls -l /dev/disk/by-path
ls -l /dev/disk/by-id

get drive information:

sudo hdparm -I /dev/sda

if you have an NVMe device...

sudo apt install -y nvme-cli
nvme list
#sudo nvme smart-log <node_name> 
sudo nvme smart-log /dev/nvme0n1 
sudo nvme id-ctrl /dev/nvme0n1

Mounting

how to mount disks to a specific folder

#list disks
sudo fdisk -l
#if you know the disk you want info about:
sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdd 
sudo mount /dev/sdd1 /media/backup
# unmount
sudo umount /media/backup
# unmount all
sudo umount -a
# force unmount
sudo umount -f /media/backup

mounting with fstab

you can get most information from lsblk if you have temporarily mounted it...

#UUID=<yourUUID> <mount_location> <filesystem>  <options>  <dump(use 0)>  <order(use 2)>
UUID=24df9215-550f-4ca0-a9f1-8f0efd2 /media/backup ext4 defaults 0 2

once you have edited, check by running

mount -a

unlock a LUKS disk from bash

sudo apt-get install cryptsetup

sudo cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/<hard-drive-name> <label>
sudo mount /dev/mapper/<label> </path/to/mount/location>

to lock it back up:

sudo umount </path/to/mount/location>
sudo cryptsetup luksClose <label>

Check unused space

first use lsblk -a to determine if you're talking about a physical partition or a logical volume

First try parted for physical partions

sudo parted /dev/<hard-drive-name> print free

for example

sudo parted /dev/sda print free

If LVM,

sudo vgdisplay

this returns some useful data:

  VG Name               ubuntu-vg
  System ID             
  Format                lvm2
  ...
  Act PV                1
  VG Size               <928.46 GiB
  PE Size               4.00 MiB
  Total PE              237685
  Alloc PE / Size       25600 / 100.00 GiB
  Free  PE / Size       212085 / <828.46 GiB
  ...

to learn about the logical volume, use

sudo lvs

to learn about the volume group (in Bytes), use

sudo vgs --units B

Extend LVM volume

we see that my volume group is called "ubuntu-vg"

sudo lvextend -L +<amount-to-extend> /dev/mapper/ubuntu--vg-ubuntu--lv

update the partition

udo resize2fs /dev/mapper/ubuntu--vg-ubuntu--lv

Recursively find storage space of a directory

du -sh /path/to/my/dir

list directories, one level only

du -h  --max-depth 1 /path/to/my/dir

Find the free space of a drive

df -H

Disk Cloning

check out dd

sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdb

sudo dd if=/dev/sda of=~/sda.dd bs=128k status=progress conv=noerror,sync
sudo dd if=/dev/sda bs=128k status=progress conv=noerror,sync | gzip -c > /sda.gz
sudo dd if=/dev/sda of=/media/danaukes/<some-uuid-here>/sda.dd bs=128k status=progress conv=noerror,sync

Change Swap

you can add hard drive space to augment RAM. This is usually set up when you install ubuntu, but it can be changed.

Turn off existing swap processes

bash sudo swapoff -a
Resize swap

```bash

sudo fallocate -l /swap.img

sudo fallocate -l 1G /swap.img ```

you can use whatever size you want in place of 1G

if that doesn't work, use

bash sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/swap.img bs=1M count=4096
ensure swap has the right permissions

bash sudo chmod 600 /swap.img
pass the new swapfile to swap

bash sudo mkswap /swap.img

Activate the swap file

bash sudo swapon /swap.img

check /etc/fstab, and ensure it has this line:

bash /swap.img none swap sw 0 0
verify your swap size:

bash free -h cat /etc/fstab

Change Swappiness

cat /etc/sysctl.conf | grep -i swappiness

echo "vm.swappiness = 10" | sudo tee -a /etc/sysctl.conf
sudo sysctl -p

Read from Serial

sudo apt install -y cu
cu -l /dev/ttyACM0 -s 9600

To exit enter ctrl+a then k, then confirm with y

sudo apt install -y screen
screen /dev/ttyACM0 9600

Identifying and locating USB devices

These widely used commands can be used to list and learn about connected USB devices in Linux.

lsusb
dmesg
dmesg | less
dmesg | grep ttyUSB
usb-devices
lsblk
sudo blkid.
sudo fdisk -l

`lsusb`

list the device tree to get port:device

lsusb -t

list all the details about a device at port 1: device 3

lsusb -v -s 1:3

list all the details about a vendor:product

lsusb -vd  0x03e7:0x2485