Information About Your System

Novell Cool Solutions: Tip
By Scott M. Morris

Digg This - Slashdot This Posted: 7 Nov 2005

Applies to:

• SUSE Linux 10
• SUSE Linux Professional
• Novell Linux Desktop
• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server

PROBLEM: I want to know whatever information I can about my system without having to install anything.

SOLUTION: Inside of the /proc directory you will find several useful files that contain a lot of information about your computer. The following table will illustrate which files contain what information:

Information files in /proc
cpuinfo	Detailed data about your CPU. Includes such information as vendor id, model name, MHz, cace size, and several other data bits.
meminfo	Detailed data about the RAM found in your machine. Contains info about the total RAM installed, the amount that is free, used by buffers, cached, and much more.
partitions	Information about the partitions on the computer. Not as much info as 'fdisk -l', but you don't need to be logged in as root to view this file.
swaps	Which partitions are in use as swap partitions.
version	Information about the version of Linux you have installed on your computer.

To view these files, you can just type in 'cat /proc/[FILENAME]' (where [FILENAME] is one of the files listed above) without the quotes at a terminal window. You should see the contents of the file appear on your screen.

Reader Comments

• Also "lspci'. "lsusb"...

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