Content-type: text/html Manpage of sysinfo

sysinfo

Section: User Commands (1)
Updated: 4 April 2002
Index Return to Main Contents
 

NAME

sysinfo - MagniComp(TM) SysInfo(TM) command displays system information in a platform neutral manner  

DOCUMENTATION GUIDE

sysinfo(1)              Overview and Command Line Interface (CLI)
mcsysinfogui(1)         Graphical User Interface (GUI)
mcsysinforeport(1)      Description of "-format report" output
mcsysinfoc(3)           C API
mcsysinfoperl(3)        Perl API
mcsysinfocf(5)          Configuration file specification
 

SYNOPSIS

sysinfo [ -background color ] [ -be path ] [ -configdir DirName ] [ -configfile FileName ] [ -copyright ] [ -class item1,item2,... ] [ -danger ] [ -display name ] [ -encode EncodeType ] [ -font name ] [ -foreground color ] [ -format FormatType ] [ -geometry geometry ] [ -iconic ] [ -infile file ] [ -msgclass msgclass1,msgclass2,... ] [ -msglevel msglevel1,msglevel2,... ] [ -name name ] [ -nw ] [ -offset amount ] [ -output file ] [ -repsep string ] [ -show item1,item2,... ] [ +|-swfiles ] [ -type type1,type2,... ] [ +|-unknown ] [ +|-unused ] [ +|-useconfig ] [ +|-useprom ]

sysinfo -list [ class|format|msgclass|msglevel|show|type ]

sysinfo -version  

DESCRIPTION

MagniComp(TM)'s SysInfo(TM) provides Unix/Linux System Administrators with extremely detailed, platform independent hardware, software, and OS configuration data for most Unix/Linux platforms. SysInfo(TM) enables System Administrators to quickly see a high level view of a system's configuration or dive deeply into very low level configuration data. You can see something as "simple" as a system's model name or you can plunge down to detailed information on disk drives to view a drive's serial number and RPM speed.

SysInfo(TM) supports both a sophisticated Command Line Interface (CLI) for consumption by both humans and programs, as well as a Graphical User Interface (GUI) to browse the volumes of data available.

Here is just some of the types of information that may be provided:


- Extremely detailed hardware (device) information
- Kernel parameters
- System configuration parameters
- Installed software packages
- Host name
- Host name aliases
- Host network addresses
- Host ID
- System serial number
- Manufacturer of the system's hardware
- System model name
- CPU type
- Application architecture
- Kernel architecture
- Amount of main memory
- Operating system name
- Operating system version
- Kernel version
The detail of information varies according to the underlying abilities of each OS.

By default SysInfo(TM) will start it's Graphical User Interface (GUI) if the $DISPLAY environment variable is set. If $DISPLAY is not set or the -nw option is specified, SysInfo(TM) will output to the command line. See mcsysinfogui(1) for details on GUI usage.

When command line output is used SysInfo(TM) will display by default a "medium" level of output suitable for a quick glance at system configuration information. The -msglevel all -class all options may be used to enable the maximum amount of system information.

The default command line output format is suitable for most humans. A program parsable output format is available by specifying:

-repsep '|' -format report

See mcsysinforeport(1) for a description of the output from this option. Please see mcsysinfoc(3) for a description of the C API and mcsysinfoperl(3) for the perl(1) API.

The scope of the information presented can by limited by classes using the ``-class Name'' option. Further selection can by made specifying the class of information and a specific item using ``-class Name -show Item''

Upon startup, SysInfo(tm) searches for a configuration file to parse. If the -configfile option is given, the specified configuration file will be used. Otherwise SysInfo(TM) will search for a suitable configuration file. Searching stops when the first configuration file is found. The following search order is used:

/etc/sysinfo.cf ConfDir/${OSname}_${OSver}.cf ConfDir/${OSname}_${OSmajver}.cf ConfDir/${OSname}.cf ConfDir/Default.cf
ConfDir is /opt/sysinfo/config by default, but can be overridden with the -configdir option or by specifying

ConfDir Dir
in the /etc/sysinfo.cf file. See mcsysinfocf(5) for more information.

If the file /etc/sysmodel exists, the first line of the file is read and used as the system model name.  

OPTIONS

The following options are valid for all invocations except as noted:
-be path
Use Path as the pathname to the back-end SysInfo program to use.
-cfdir DirName
This option is obsoleted by the -configdir option.
-cffile FileName
This option is obsoleted by the -configfile option.
-configdir DirName
Specify the name of the directory to use to find sysinfo.cf format configuration files.
-configfile FileName
Specify the name of a sysinfo.cf format configuration file to use. If the specified FileName cannot be opened for any reason, an error message is displayed and the program will exit.
-copyright
Print the software's copyright message and exit.
-class Name1,Name2,...
Limit information to a specific class or classes of information. The default class is General.
-danger
Normally SysInfo(tm) checks upon startup to make sure it's running on the same platform (OS Name, OS Version, CPU Type, and CPU Architecture (on some platforms)) as it was built on. This option overrides/disables this check. Using this option usually means that the information provided may be false or incomplete.
-encode EncodeType
Encode output in the specified manner where EncodeType is one of the following:
html
Encode as HTML.
text
Encode as ASCII text. This is the default.
-format FormatType
Specify the format layout and display of requested data. Valid FormatType values are:
columns
Data is formated in columns. The output is suited for viewing in terminal windows set to a minimum width of 80 characters. Output will be adjusted if the terminal width is greater than 80 characters. Terminal width is determined by first looking for the environment variable COLUMNS. If not set, the output stream associated with standard output is checked for terminal width.
pretty
(DEPRECATED) Same as tree
report
Output is in a format suitable for parsing by a program. Entries are printed one per line with fields separated by ``|'' (vertical pipe) by default. The -repsep option can be used to change this value.
tree
Output in hierarchical tree format suitable for human viewing. This is the default.
-infile file
Use file as the source of data to display instead of probing system for data. The file should contain data in sysinfo -format report format (see mcsysinforeport(1) ) This option is only used when using the SysInfo(tm) GUI.
-msgclass msgclass1,msgclass2,...
Specify which class of messages should be output. The default value for -msgclass is info,warn,cerror. The list of possible msgclass values are:
all
All of the below classes except for debug.
info
Display normal informational messages. All the actual useful bits of information about your system are output as msgclass info.
warn
Display warning messages about any condition that occurred while SysInfo(tm) is running which may affect what information is found. Normally these are problems such as SysInfo(tm) not running with the right permissions or certain things are missing from the system which are not required, but may result in incomplete information.
gerror
Display general error messages. These are non-fatal errors which are usually quite normal. For instance, a certain type of query (such as a ioctl() call) of a device fails because it's not supported on that particular model.
cerror
Display critical errors which prevent SysInfo(tm) from continuing further.
debug
Print debugging information. Lots of information you normally don't want to see, but which is very valuable for debugging problems with SysInfo(tm).
-msglevel msglevel1,msglevel2,...
Set the level of messages that are shown. msglevels is a comma separated list of values used to determine what levels of message will be displayed. The list of possible msglevel values are:
all
All possible levels of information. This option provides the maximum amount of detailed information about a system.
terse
Display output in terse format. The affect of this option is dependent on the Class of information being displayed. It usually results in the labels for each output value being suppressed. This is useful if you are running SysInfo(tm) from a script to obtain a few specific values (e.g. System Model, CPU Architecture, etc).
brief
More than terse but less than all.
general
General level of information useful for a quick look at overall system configuration. This is the default.
descriptions
Like general but with more descriptive information.
config
Similar to general and descriptions
-nw
No windows. Force SysInfo(tm) to use it's command line interface (CLI) even if the environment is capable of running the SysInfo(tm) GUI.
-list [ class|format|msgclass|msglevel|show|type ]
List the possible values that may be used with an option. With no arguments are specified, a list is valid arguments is displayed. When an argument is supplied, the information specific to that argument is displayed.
-offset amount
Set the number of spaces to offset (indent) when printing device information.
-output file
Write content output to file. Errors and warnings are output to standard error. The default is to output content to standard output.
-repsep string
Change the field separator string used with -format report to be string. The default is ``|'' (vertical pipe).
-show item1,item2,...
Show information only about each comma separated item. Run sysinfo -list show for a list of valid item arguments. If the -class option is not specified, then the General class is assumed.
+|-swfiles
When +swfiles is specified and software class information is being displayed, a list of files and file data is displayed for all files belonging to each package. The default is (-swfiles) not to display file data.
-type item1,item2,...
Limit information to a specific type of item as specified by item1,item2,... Run sysinfo -list type for a list of valid item arguments.
+|-unknown
Enable (+unknown) or disable (-unknown) showing devices that appear to be present on the system, but are not "known" to SysInfo(tm). This option is disabled by default.
+|-unused
Enable (+unused) or disable (-unused) showing partitions that do not appear to be in use. The default is -unused.
+|-useconfig
Enable (+useconfig) or disable (-useconfig) use of configuration files. This option is useful if you want to run SysInfo(tm) without having the configuration files installed. Note that only certain types of information - such as some of the General values - will be available without use of configuration files. The default is +useconfig.
+|-useprom
Enable (+useprom) or disable (-useprom) using values obtained from the system PROM instead of interpreting values obtained directly from the kernel. Certain values are normally obtained by looking up a variable in the kernel and checking the result against a table of values compiled into SysInfo(tm). By enabling this option, SysInfo(tm) will attempt to obtain certain values from the system PROM. This support is currently limited to the System Model value. Support is also limited to those machines which support such a system PROM.
-version
Show version information for SysInfo(tm).
 

GUI OPTIONS

The following options apply only when the SysInfo(tm) GUI is invoked:
-background color
Set the window background to color where color is a system defined name such as orange or a numeric representation as supported by the X(1) RGB specification.
-display name
Name of display to output to. Default is current display.
-font name
Set default font for text to be name. Default is arial.
-foreground color
Similar to -background but sets the window foreground color instead of the background color.
-geometry geometry
Specifies an X(1) geometry defining the size and/or location of the window. The geometry is of form Hx[XY] (i.e. 400x600+20+25 which creates a 400 x 600 window at location 20x25) where:
H
Height in pixels.
W
Width in pixels.
X
The X (horizontal) offset in pixels preceded by a + to indicate positive offset or a - to indicate negative offset.
Y
Same as with except this value indicates Y (vertical) offset.
-iconic
Start the application iconified.
-name name
Specify the name of the application used for option database lookup. The default is sysinfo.

 

EXAMPLES

The following command displays the maximum amount of information about a system:

sysinfo -msglevel all

The following command formats data as a hierarchical tree, encodes the output as HTML, and places it in a file called result.html:

sysinfo -format tree -encode html -output result.html

This command does the same as the previous example, but provides much more detailed information:

sysinfo -format tree -encode html -output result.html -msglevel all

The following command formats data in columns and rows and encodes the output as text (the default):

sysinfo -format columns

The following command formats all classes and levels of data in columns and rows, encodes the output as HTML, and writes the results to a file called result.html:

sysinfo -class all -msglevel all -format columns -encode html -output result.html

A very useful command to use when DEBUGGING SysInfo(tm) is:

sysinfo -msglevel all -msgclass all,debug

The following example outputs just the System Model:

sysinfo -msglevel terse -show model

This command will limit the output to just information about Kernel variables:

sysinfo -class kernel

The following command provides the maximum amount of data in a software parsable format:

sysinfo -msglevel all -format report -repsep '|'

 

AUTHOR

MagniComp
http://www.MagniComp.com  

URL

http://www.magnicomp.com/sysinfo  

FILES

/opt/sysinfo/config    - Directory of config files

/etc/sysinfo.cf - Master configuration file
/etc/sysmodel  - Explicitly set the CPU model name
 

SEE ALSO

mcsysinfogui(1), mcsysinforeport(1), mcsysinfoc(3), mcsysinfoperl(3), mcsysinfocf(5), gethostid(2), gethostname(2), gethostbyname(3)  

DIAGNOSTICS

%x: Unknown CPU type.
The CPU model for the current host could not be determined.
(unknown)
Information could not be determined for this item.
 

BUGS

Not all operating systems support interfaces to various pieces of information that MagniComp(tm) SysInfo(tm) supports.

Some devices, mostly devices that use removable media such as tape drives and floppy disks, are only indicated (shown) as present if media is loaded in the device and it's on-line. This occurs because the OS does not provide a software interface to query the device when media is not loaded.

SunOS allows only one process at a time to have /dev/openprom open. This may result in certain pieces of information not always showing up consistently. When in doubt, enable debugging (-msgclass debug).

Under SunOS 5.4 the ROM Version field is blank. This is due to a change made by Sun in libkvm. Sun patch 102555-01 is suppose to fix this problem. MagniComp(tm) Sysinfo(tm) uses a new OBP interface in SunOS 5.5 that by-passes this problem.

Under SunOS 4.x the Serial Number field is left blank since the kernel usually returns incorrect information.

Under SunOS 5.x the Serial Number field will show the serial number as obtained from the system's IDPROM. This serial number has no correspondence with the system serial number that appears on the back of your machine.

Under SunOS there is no way to tell the difference between an MC68020 (like the 3/60) and MC68030 (like the 3/80) based machine.


 

Index

NAME
DOCUMENTATION GUIDE
SYNOPSIS
DESCRIPTION
OPTIONS
GUI OPTIONS
EXAMPLES
AUTHOR
URL
FILES
SEE ALSO
DIAGNOSTICS
BUGS

This document was created by man2html, using the manual pages.
Time: 16:34:05 GMT, April 25, 2002