HW PROBE 1.6 BETA

Hardware Probe Tool (hw-probe) — a tool to probe for hardware, check operability and find drivers with the help of Linux hardware database: https://linux-hardware.org

For BSD users: https://bsd-hardware.info

Contents

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

About

Probe — is a snapshot of your computer's hardware state and logs. The tool checks operability of devices by analysis of logs and returns a permanent url to view the probe of the computer.

Share your probes and logs with Linux/BSD developers in order to debug and fix problems on your computer. Simplify inventory of hardware in your company. Please read more in our blog.

If some of your computer devices doesn't work due to a missed driver then the tool will suggest a proper Linux kernel version according to the LKDDb or third-party drivers.

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

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

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

Install

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

Also you can install a native package (RPM, Deb, Pkg, etc.) for your Linux distribution or install from source. See install instructions in the INSTALL.md file.

See install instructions for BSD in the INSTALL.BSD.md file.

Usage

Make a probe:

sudo -E hw-probe -all -upload

Review

You can adjust device statuses in your probe and leave comments. Look for big green REVIEW button on the probe page.

AppImage

The portable app that runs anywhere, no need to install anything. Just download hw-probe-1.5-149-x86_64.AppImage and run the following command in terminal to probe your computer:

chmod +x ./hw-probe-1.5-149-x86_64.AppImage
sudo -E ./hw-probe-1.5-149-x86_64.AppImage -all -upload

You may need to install

fuse-libs

libfuse2

Supported systems

The app runs on all 64-bit Linux distributions with

Glibc >= 2.14

• Ubuntu 12.04 and newer
• Linux Mint 13 and newer
• Debian 8 and newer
• openSUSE 12.0 and newer
• Manjaro 0.8 and newer
• MX Linux 14 and newer
• ROSA Linux R1 and newer
• elementary OS 0.2 and newer
• Fedora 15 and newer (need to add

  fuse-libs

  package on Fedora 15, 16 and 17)
• RHEL 7 and newer
• CentOS 7 and newer
• Solus 3 and newer
• Puppy Linux 6.0 and newer (Tahr64, XenialPup64, BionicPup64, etc.)
• Clear Linux of any version
• Arch Linux of any version
• EndeavourOS 2019 and newer
• Pop!_OS 17 and newer
• Mageia 2 and newer
• Alt Linux 7 and newer
• Gentoo 12 and newer
• Sabayon 13 and newer
• Slackware 14.2 and newer

Docker

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

sudo -E 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

You may need to run

xhost +local:

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

Install the universal Linux package:

sudo snap install hw-probe

The

hw-probe

export PATH=$PATH:/snap/bin

Connect

block-devices

sudo snap connect hw-probe:block-devices :block-devices

Now you can create computer probes:

sudo -E hw-probe -all -upload

Note: You need a Snap runtime (

snapd

/snap

/var/lib/snapd/snap

sudo ln -s /var/lib/snapd/snap /snap

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. Please enable

Access to disk block devices

Permissions

Classic Snap

It's better to use classic snap to collect more info about the computer:

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

Connect system interfaces:

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

Create computer probes:

sudo -E hw-probe -all -upload

Supported systems

• Ubuntu 14.04 and newer
• Debian 9 and newer
• Fedora 26 and newer
• Solus 3 and newer
• Zorin 12.3 and newer

For other Linux distributions see install manual here: https://docs.snapcraft.io/installing-snapd/6735

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:

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

Run it as root if you want to check your hard drives health.

App Center

Find the

Hardware Probe

gnome-software-plugin-flatpak

Note: The 'Launch' button doesn't display the probe window currently due to bug 552 in GNOME Software, but the probe is still created silently in the background process. Use desktop icon instead to launch the hardware probe properly or see probe log in

$HOME/.var/app/org.linux_hardware.hw-probe/data/HW_PROBE/LOG

Flathub

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

Supported systems

Out of the box:

• Endless OS 3 and newer
• Linux Mint 18.3 and newer
• Fedora 27 and newer
• CentOS 7.6 GNOME and newer
• Pop!_OS 20.04 and newer

Need to setup Flatpak (https://flatpak.org/setup/):

• elementary OS 5 and newer
• Pop!_OS 18.04 and newer
• Solus 3 and newer
• Clear Linux of any version
• Mageia 6 and newer
• openSUSE Leap 15 and newer
• RHEL 7.6 and newer
• Arch Linux
• Chrome OS

Inventory

Since hw-probe 1.5.

Request inventory ID:

hw-probe -generate-inventory -email [email protected]

Mark your probes by this ID:

sudo -E hw-probe -all -upload -i ID

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

The Email is needed to get notifications if hardware failures are detected on your computer in future probes.

Offline view

Since hw-probe 1.5.

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

hw-probe -import ./DIR -inventory-id ID

ACPI dump

Dump and decode ACPI table:

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

NOTE:

acpica-tools

Operability

The tool checks operability of devices on board by analysis of collected log files.

| Status | Meaning | |----------|---------| | works | Driver is found and operates properly (passed static or dynamic tests) | | limited | Works, but with limited functionality | | detected | Device is detected, driver is found, but not tested yet | | failed | Driver is not found or device is broken | | malfunc | Error operation of the device or driver |

You can perform additional operability sanity tests by the following command:

sudo -E hw-probe -all -check -upload

The following tests are executed:

• graphics test by

  glxgears

  for both integrated and discrete graphics cards (requires

  mesa-demos

  package to be installed)
• 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. You can execute particular tests using appropriate options:

-check-graphics

-check-hdd

-check-cpu

-check-memory

Disable logs

You can disable collecting of unwanted logs by the

-disable A,B,C,...

For example, to disable collecting of

xdpyinfo

xorg.conf

sudo -E hw-probe -all -upload -disable xdpyinfo,xorg.conf

Privacy

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

The tool uploads 32-byte prefix of salted SHA512 hash of MAC addresses and serial numbers to properly identify unique computers and hard drives. UUIDs are decorated in the same way, but formatted like regular UUIDs in order to save readability of logs. All the data is uploaded securely via HTTPS.

License

This work is dual-licensed under LGPL 2.1 (or any later version) and BSD-4-Clause. You can choose between one of them if you use this work.

SPDX-License-Identifier: LGPL-2.1-or-later OR BSD-4-Clause

Enjoy!