Hardware probe
hw-probe (hardware probe) is a Perl program which is able to:
- collect output from a number of utilities—such as lspci(8) and hwinfo(8)—and some other logs,
- analyze collected data:
- check if drivers were loaded,
- check for driver or hardware operability status (partially),
- benchmark (quick and simple)—by using several tools such as 7-Zip and hdparm,
- contribute this information to the Linux Hardware Database.
Statistics that is based on the database data—both current and historical one—can be viewed at Trends.
Installation
Install the hw-probeAUR package. Additional packages that might be useful:
- 7zip — benchmarking (with
--check-7zor--check-extendedoption), - hdparm — probing and benchmarking storage devices,
- memtester — memory testing during benchmarking,
- mesa-utils — probing and benchmarking OpenGL on X,
- perl-json-xs — JSON-formatted
devices.jsonoutput file.
Usage
Tip hw-probe does not have a man page. See the output of
hw-probe --help, the project README and the source code.Make a probe:
# hw-probe --all --upload
Decode ACPI tables (requires acpica package):
# hw-probe --all --upload --decode-acpi
Benchmarking
Specific benchmarking options:
--check-7z— test CPU and RAM with7z b,--check-cpu— test CPU by applying md5sum(1) to 512 MB of zeroes from dd(1),--check-graphics— test GPU with glxgears,--check-hdd— test storage devices with hdparm(8) § t,
--limit-check-hdd=number— limit number of drives to be tested—i.e. test only the first number of them,
--check-memory— test 8 megabytes of RAM with memtester(8).
Note
- These specific benchmarking options are not listed in the output of
hw-probe --help, but most of them are mentioned in the Operability section of README. - If some testing tool—e.g. memtester or glxgears—is not present on your system, hw-probe silently skips its usage with no notice displayed, even if
--listoption was used.
Perform all benchmarking tests mentioned above, including 7-Zip one:
# hw-probe --check-extended