Posts Tagged ‘Graphical’

Getting Console and Graphical hardware system information on Linux with cpuinfo, neofetch, CPU-X (CPU-Z Unix alternative), I-nex and inxi

Tuesday, September 17th, 2019

getting-console-information-and-graphical-hardware-system-information-Linux-cpuinfo-neofetch-cpu-x-i-nex-1

Earlier I've wrote extensive article on how to get hardware information on Linux using tools such as dmidecode, hardinfo, lshw, hwinfo, x86info and biosdecode but there are few other hardware reporting tools for Linux worthy to mention that has been there for historical reasons such as cpuinfo as we as some new shiny ones such as neofetch (a terminal / console hardware report tool as well the CPU-X and I-Nex  which is Linux equivalent to the all known almost standard for Windows hardware detection CPU-Z worthy to say few words about.
 

1. cpuinfo

 

Perhaps the most basic tool to give you a brief information about your Processor type (model) number of Cores and Logical Processors is cpuinfo

I remember cpuinfo has been there since the very beginning on almost all Linux distributions's repository, nowadays its popularity of the days when the kings on the Linux OS server scenes were Slackware, Caldera OpenLinux and Redhat 6.0 Linux and Debian 3.0  declined but still for scripting purposes it is handy small proggie.

To install and run it in Debian  / Ubuntu / Mint Linux etc.:

 

aptitude install -y cpuinfo

/usr/bin/cpu-info

 

Linux-get-processor-system-info-in-console-cpu-info

 

2. neofetch

 

The next one worthy to install and check is neofetch (a cross-platform and easy-to-use system information
 command line script that collects your Linux system information and display it on the terminal next to an image, it could be your distributions logo or any ascii art of your choice.)

The cool thing about neofetch is besides being able to identify the System server / desktop hardware parameters, it gives some basic info about number of packages installed on the system, memory free and in use, used kernel and exact type of System (be it Dell PowerEdge Model XX, IBM eSeries Model / HP Proliant Model etc.

neofetch-OS-hardware-information-Linux-ascii-system-info-desktop-notebook

neofetch info generated on my home used Lenovo Thikpad T420

neofetch-OS-hardware-information-Linux-ascii-system-info-pcfreak-home-server
neofetch info from www.pc-freak.net running current machine

neofetch even supports Mac OS X and Windows OS ! 🙂

To install neofetch on Mac OS X:
 

/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"


or via Mac ported packages using brew

brew install neofetch


neofetch-screenshot-from-Mac-OS-X

neofetch is even installable on Windows OS that has the scoop command line installer tool installer manager with below PowerShell code in cmd.exe (Command line):

powershell Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned -scope CurrentUser
iex (new-object net.webclient).downloadstring('https://get.scoop.sh')
scoop install git
scoop install neofetch

neofetch-microsoft-windows-hardware-command-line-report-tool-screenshot


By the way Scoop was quite a finding for me and it is pretty handy to install plenty of useful command line Linux / UNIX tools, such as curl, wget, git etc. in the same easy straight forward way as a standard yum or apt-get on Windows (without explicitly installing things as GnuWin and CygWin).
 

3. CPU-X graphical user interface hardware report Linux GUI alternative to Windows CPU-Z


The packages for CPU-X are a bit outdated and even though there are rpm packages for Fedora, OpenSuSE and .deb package for Debian for Debian, Ubuntu and ArchLinux (pacman), there is no up to date version for Debian 10 and the package builds distributed for different Linux distros are a bit outdated.

Thus to install CPU-X on any Linux distribution it is perhaps best to use the portable version (static binary) of CPU-X.
It is currently available on https://github.com/X0rg/CPU-X/releases

To install latest portable version of CPU-X

wget https://github.com/X0rg/CPU-X/releases/download/v3.2.4/CPU-X_v3.2.4_portable.tar.gz

mkdir CPU-X
cd CPU-X

tar -zxvvf CPU-X_v3.2.4_portable.tar.gz
-rwxr-xr-x yohan/users 4563032 2019-01-13 22:15 CPU-X_v3.2.4_portable.bsd64
-rwxr-xr-x yohan/users 5484968 2019-01-13 22:15 CPU-X_v3.2.4_portable.linux64

 

cp -rpf CPU-X_v3.2.4_portable.linux64 /usr/local/bin/
ln -sf /usr/local/bin/CPU-X_v3.2.4_portable.linux64 /usr/local/bin/cpu-x


Next run as superuser (root)
 

hipo@jeremiah:~$ su -c 'cpu-x'

 

As seen from below screenshots cpu-x reports a lot of concrete specific hardware data on:

  • Processor
  • Motherboard
  • Memory
  • System
  • Graphic card
  • Performance

cpu-x-cpu-cpu-z-alternative-linux-screenshot-CPU-info

cpu-x-cpu-cpu-z-alternative-linux-screenshot-caches-info

cpu-x-cpu-cpu-z-alternative-linux-screenshot-Motherboard-info

cpu-x-cpu-cpu-z-alternative-linux-screenshot-memory-info

cpu-x-cpu-cpu-z-alternative-linux-screenshot-system-info

cpu-x-cpu-cpu-z-alternative-linux-screenshot-graphics-info

CPU-X can be installed also on FreeBSD very easily by just installing from BSD port tree sysutils/cpu-x/
It is also said to work on other *BSDs, NetBSD, OpenBSD Unixes but I guess this will require a manual compilation based on FreeBSD's port Makefile.

4. I-Nex another GUI alternative to CPU-Z for UNIX / Linux

I-Nex is even more useful for general hardware reporting as it reports many hardware specifications not reported by CPU-X such as Battery type and Model Name  (if the hardware report is on a laptop), info on USB devices slots or plugged USB devices brand and specifications, the available Network devices on the system (MAC Addresses) of each of it, Installed and used drivers on Hard Disk (ATA / SATA / SCSI / SSD), HW Sector size, Logical Block size, HDD Sectors count and other specific Hard Drive data as well as information on available Audio (Sound Blaster) devices (HDA-Intel), used Codecs, loaded kernel ALSA driver, Video card used and most importantly indicators on Processor reported CPU (temperature).

 

To install I-nex

Go to https://launchpad.net/i-nex or any of the mirror links where it resides and install the respective package, in my case, I was doing the installation on Debian Linux, so fetched current latest amd64 package which as of moment of writting this article is i-nex_7.6.0-0-bzr977-20161012-ubuntu16.10.1_amd64.deb , next installed it with dpkg
 

dpkg -i i-nex_7.6.0-0-bzr977-20161012-ubuntu16.10.1_amd64.deb

 

As the package was depending on some other .deb packages, which failed to install to install the missing ones I had to further run
 

apt –fix-broken install

i-nex-cpu-info-linux-hardware-info-program

 

hre

I-Nex thermal indicators about CPU temperature on a Linux Desktop notebook

i-nex-gpu-info-linux-hardware-info-program

i-nex-mobo-info-linux-hardware-info-program

i-nex-audio-info-linux-hardware-info-program

i-nex-drivers-info-linux-hardware-info-program

i-nex-system-info-linux-hardware-info-program

i-nex-battery-info-linux-hardware-info-program

 

There are other Hardware identification report tools such as CUDA-Z that are useful to check if you have Nvidia Video Card hardware Installed on the PC to check the status of CUDA enabled GPUs, useful if working with nVidia Geforce, Quadro, Tesla cards and ION chipsets.

If you use it however be aware that CUDA-Z is not compatible with 3rd-party linux drivers for NVidia so make sure you have the current official Nvidia version.

 

5. Inxi full featured system information script

 

Inxi is a 10000 lines mega bash script that fetches hardware details from multiple different sources in /proc /sys and from commands on the system, and generates a beautiful looking console report that non technical users can read easily.

inxi-10-k-mega-bash-shell-script-reporting-on-installed-system-computer-hardware

 

inxi -Fx

 

 

inxi-report-on-installed-hardware-on-my-lenovo-thinkpad-home-laptop

Each of the pointed above tools has different method of collection of Hardware information from various resources e.g. – kernel loaded modules, dmesg, files like /proc/meminfo /proc/version /proc/scsi/scsi /proc/partitions.
Hence some of the tools are likely to report more info than otheres, so in case if some information you need regarding the system plugged in hardware is missing you can perhaps obtain it from another program. Most Linux distribution desktop provided GNOME package are including Hardinfo gui tool, but in many cases above mentioned tools are likely to add even more on info on what is inside your PC Box.
If you're aware of others tools that are useful not mentioned here please share it.

Debian Linux how to remove Xorg, Gnome / KDE, GDM and other graphical environment packages from a server

Wednesday, October 17th, 2012

Lets say by mistake you install a package and apt installs as a package dependency a whole bunch of Xorg, GDM GNOME 2 / 3 (desktop environment) along with whole other multitude of meta packages just like, lets say xinit , nautilus, totem, gedit,remmina etc.:
Mistakenly installing a graphical environment happens common (at least in my experience as admin happed many, many times). Often installing GUI by mistake is done on already well configured productive server, serving thousand of HTTP, SQL and Mails daily.
Having a started GDM login on the server takes some from the CPU time and also is extends possibilities for security breach to the server, so as always if something is not used it is better to wipe it off …

Here are some apt-get remove commands which will (COMPLETELY) remove Xserver ( Xorg ), Graphical Login Manager (GDM), GNOME desktop environment and their surrounding stuff:


# apt-get remove xorg
# apt-get remove nautilus-data nautilus-sendto libnautilus-extension1
# apt-get remove desktop-base
# apt-get remove python-gnomedesktop
# apt-get remove gdm3
# apt-get remove totem seahorse remmina gedit-common gconf2 epipha gedit-common gconf-defaults-service xauth
# apt-get remove epiphany-browser-data evolution-webcal gconf2
# apt-get remove nautilus-data nautilus-sendto libnautilus-extension1
# apt-get remove x11-common
# apt-get autoremove --purge gnome*

Here something worthy to mention is in Debian and (its deb based linux erivatives including Ubuntu), there are the so called metapackages. For those who don’t know what a meta-package is?; it is a package linked to a group of packages. Actually the meta package itself is a pre-selected Packages ready to install / remove with apt, aptitude or rest of “intelligent” package management utils available for Debian.
Once a meta-package is installed, all linked package dependencies; be it binaries or libraries as well as the proper configurations are downloaded and installed.

Very useful thing hence is listing all install-able metapackages; to list all available metapackages in Debian Linux use:


# apt-cache search metapackage
....

.....
......

As of time of writing this post there are 276 apt installable metapackages existent on Debian Squeeze 6.0.5 Linux:


# apt-cache search metapackage|wc -l
276

Another more general way to see the basic types of metapackages, installable is via tasksel (tasksel is run and used during initial Debian Installer via install CD);
In tasksel, there are few meta-packages; Actually tasksel is very handy for sysadmins who install new servers :). Here is list of available meta-packs through it:


# tasksel --list-tasks
i web-server Web server
u print-server Print server
i dns-server DNS server
u file-server File server
u mail-server Mail server
u database-server SQL database
i ssh-server SSH server
u laptop Laptop
u manual manual package selection
u desktop Graphical desktop environment
i web-server Web server
u print-server Print server
i dns-server DNS server
u file-server File server
u mail-server Mail server
u database-server SQL database
i ssh-server SSH server
u laptop Laptop
u manual manual package selection

It is possible to also view sub-packages contained within, each of tasksel meta-packs, i.e..:


# tasksel --task-packages desktop
twm
eject
openoffice.org
xserver-xorg-video-all
cups-client
openoffice.org-help-en-us
hp-ppd
avahi-daemon
system-config-printer
openoffice.org-thesaurus-en-us
cpufrequtils
myspell-en-us
xdg-utils
pm-utils
cups
cups-bsd
xorg
iceweasel
xserver-xorg-input-all
hplip
desktop-base
alsa-base
libnss-mdns
browser-plugin-gnash
xterm
anacron
alsa-utils
cups-driver-gutenprint
foo2zjs
hpijs
gimp
menu
kerneloops
openoffice.org-gcj
libgl1-mesa-dri
foomatic-db-engine

Actually using tasksel is much more “intelligent” way to remove GNOME, GDM and Xorg from a server. It will completely wipe out everything previously installed for running Desktop Environment on the host.
To remove desktop environment with tasksel:


# tasksel remove desktop

Ncurses progress bar will appear displaying all removed packages …
In my case, during trying to figure out what packages I need to remove ImageMagick as long as few other packages got removed as dependencies so I had to install them over with:


apt-get install --yes imagemagick libice6 php5-imagick libxvmc1 \
libzbar0 libxt6 libsm6 libxres1 libxtst6 libxvmc1 x-ttcidfont-conf libxxf86dga1

For people who need to remove KDE desktop environment from a host to be used as a server, check out KDE meta-packages:


apt-cache search metapackage|grep -i kde

You can remove all KDE related meta-packs within a bash loop, like so:


for i in $(apt-cache search metapackage|grep -i kde|awk '{ print $1 }'); do \
apt-get remove $i; done

It is also usually good idea, once all packages are removed the RC Remove Candidate deb packagse are removed too – if you don’t know what is RC I suggest you read my previous post here

Removing all rc‘s from system can be done with:


# for i in $(dpkg -l | grep -i '^rc' | awk '{ print $2 }'); do \
dpkg --purge $i; \
done

Though, I tested this if you follow my tutorial be careful, something might break and some essenail package or lib for (your custom) services might be removed. Be careful what is offered to uninstall only approve it if you’re 1000% sure; Please don’t count me responsible if apt- removes something which breaks your productive server 🙂

Graphical representation of Open Source history generated from SVN and GIT commits with Gource – Software version control visualization

Thursday, September 1st, 2011

A friend of mine has sent me a link to awesome videos produced with an open source tool called Gource

The tool is really awesome as its capable of producing amazing graphical visualizations from source tree repositories obtained from software SVN or GIT repositories

Someone used it to create a wonderful videos and relate the graphical visualization with wondeful music to show graphically the Software development for the main Free Software Projects. 😉

The points which move around in videos are graphical representation of the repository source, the nodes which buzzle around are users who commit source in the project repositories.
The whole graphical representation is being generated based on all the latest source hold inside the software repository, on top of the videos its visible the date of each of the source commits.
Below are few of the nice videos, the rest are available for checkout in Youtube, Enjoy! 😉

OpenOffice Development – Graphical representation

PHP Development – Graphical representation

History of Python development since 1990 with Gource

Development of MySQL 2000-2010 – Graphical representation

Perl development history in less then 4 minutes. Visualized with gource.

How to install Skype on 64 bit Ubuntu (amd64) architecture

Sunday, July 17th, 2011

It seems Skype has troubles installing on 64 bit Ubuntu via Ubuntu’s Graphical Package Install manager which in Ubuntu 11.04 is called (Ubuntu Software Center)

During my attempt to take advantage of the nice GUI apt frontend, I encontered the error:
Wrong Architecture amd64

And Skype install failed, as you see in below’s picture (which you might be unable to read since it’s stating the error in Bulgarian 😉

error Ubuntu 11.04 Skype Install error in architecture amd64

The error is quite understandable, since the Skype deb package which tried to install was built for the i386 architecture.
Since the Software Center was not intelligent enough to work around the issue, I finally fixed it myself using the good old apt-get in terminal, like so:

root@ubuntu:~# apt-get install skype
...

apt did not even complain that the package had a different architecture for i386 and installed skype without any errors as well Skype worked immediately even though the arthictural difference.
This is probably because even though it’s a amd64 Ubuntu it has a kernel module loaded to support i386 binaries 😉
Now my sister can enjoy her skype on the shiny Ubuntu 😉