Bugs:
1. -I line, sometimes running in showed sudo. This is hopefully now corrected.
Fixes:
1. CPU architectures, small reordering based on hopefully more reliable data
source, but these are hard to find conclusively.
2. -S Distro id: switched ordering of prefered os-release sources, PRETTY_NAME
is not being used consistently, too many distros leave out the distro id found
in VERSION, so now it uses NAME + VERSION if both are there, then PRETTY_NAME
as a fallback. That reverses how it was, but it will provide better results for
most distros. Distros that did this properly to begin with should see no change.
3. Now that inxi is basically debugged and working, I've removed the output of
'inxi' from the -t lines. It remains for the pinxi branch however so you can
see how many resources pinxi uses to run.
4. ipmi sensors data are proving to be as random as lm-sensors. Added another
alternate syntax for sensors.
5. CPU: found an alternate syntax, again, for IPMI and sensors data, added
support, I hope, for that.
Enhancements:
1. Added /proc debugger tool to debugger. Due to oddities with how the /proc file
system is created, it will only run as user, not root, unless the --proc flag is
used. More programs added to debugger commands.
2. More disk vendor strings added, fine tuning of vendor detections. There is a
tendency in NVMe disk names to put the vendor name in the middle of the string.
That is now handled for a few key vendors.
3. Added basic ARM SOC and server support. This will require more work in the future
because the syntax used varies significantly device to device, but the featuers
are now in place to add that support. Most SBC ARM devices should now at least show
the model and details data in machine data, and some will show -G -A -N data as
well.
4. ARM CPU: added first attempt to show the cpu variant as well as the more
generic ARM data. This shows 1 or more variants, some ARM devices have two different
cpu cores running at different speeds. Odroid for example.
5. Added system 'base:' data for -Sx, that modifies Distro: in supported cases.
Currently only Mint and MX/AntiX supported because each specific distro must be
handled explicitly using empirical file based data tests. I decided against showing
this for rolling release, since really everyone knows that Antergos is made from
Arch Linux, so showing that does not provide much useful information, whereas
showing the Ubuntu version Mint was made from does.
Note that several derived distros are changing how they use os-release, so the
tools had to be revised to be more dynamic, which is a pain, and makes it even
more empirical and less predictable to print what should be trivially easy to
gather distro and derived source data.
If your distro is not in this list and you want the base data to be present, please
supply a --debug 22 dataset so I can check all the files required to make the
detection work. If your distro has changed methods, please note which methods
were used in the past, and which are used now.
6. Added Armbian distro detection, that's tricky. Added Rasbpian detections.
Added improved Antergos, Arco, and maybe Chakra, Arch detections.
7. Big one: Hardware RAID basic support added. Note that each vendor, and
unfortunatley, often each product line, has its own raid status and drive
reporting tools, which makes adding the actual drive/raid/status report part
very time consuming to add. I may only support this if a certain software maker's
raid tools are installed because they are much simpler to parse, but for now,
it only shows the presence of the raid device itself, not disks, raid status, etc.
Bugs:
1. Color selector accepted '' as a value, which it would then write to config
file, creating errors since it's not an integer value.
2. Corrected distro id error for last fallback case, making the distro ID out
of the filename itself, that was missing the assignment to $distro.
3. mmcblk0 was showing up as an unmounted partition, due to failing to filter
mmcblk[0-9] in unmounted.
Fixes:
1. Added missing compositor kwin_wayland to compositor detections
2. For -M, on laptops, sometimes Type: would duplicate in Chassis: type: which
looks silly, so now it checks to make sure the two values are different before
using the Chassis: type: data.
3. -D disk vendor, added GALAX, fixed Toshiba, which sometimes occurs other than
start of disk id string, so now it checks the whole string. This seems particularly
common in nvme devices from Toshiba. This is the only vendor I have found that
puts the vendor string later in the device id string.
4. Added protection against unreadable but present /etc/issue. This was caused
by a now fixed bug in OpenSuSe, which symbolically linked to create /etc/issue
from /var/run/issue, but with 600 permissions, root read only, that is. Note that
this bug has since been fixed (now has the correct 644 permissions), but I figured
better safe than sorry in case anyone else decides that's a good idea in the future.
Now only sends to reader if readable.
5. Related to 4, made reader not exit on failure, now just prints error message and
keeps going.
6. Upped maximum distro string length to 60, from 50. AntiX for example was coming
in at 48, so I decided to add some safe room now that inxi does dynamic sizing, it
is not a big problem having very long distro id strings.
Enhancements:
1. Added basic /proc data parser to debugger. Can't get all the data or files because
it's simply too big, but grabs the basics.
2. Added vcgencmd for some ARM rasberry pi debugging.
3. ARM: add model if not found in /proc/cpuinfo, or if different.
4. Added Tdie cpu sensor type, this is coming soon in latest kernels, so catching
it early. Tdie will replace k10-temp sensor item temp1.
5. Added --admin extra data option, and first set of extra data, -C, which will
show CPU Errata (bugs), family, model-id, stepping (as hex (decimal) or hex if less
than or equal to 9), microcode (as hex).
6. Battery: added with -x option, if found, attached battery driven devices, like
wifi keyboard, mouse. If upower is present, will also try to show battery charge
percent for those devices. Note that -B only shows the Device-X items if -x is used,
and will not show anything in -F unless there is a system, not device, battery
present, or if -Fx is used and there is a Device battery detected.
Added upower to recommends.
7. Basic -Dxxx disk rotation speeds added. Requires udevadm. Not all spinning disks
show rotation speeds, and it depends on udevadm, so if no rotation found, it shows
nothing.
8. Added explicit Arco Linux and Antergos distro ID support. This requires more
checks, but in theory, both should now show Arco Linux or Antergos instead of default
'Arch Linux' as before, plus extra data if found, like version.
This version is very peaceful, no big changes, just a few fixes and small new
features added.
This version corrects a few small glitches reported by users, and adds basic support
for disk speed report. Note that this is not as accurate as I'd like, it tries, but
there is not a lot of data to be had. Limits of disk speed seems to be, roughly:
1. most speed is reported as max board can do, not max drive can support
2. usually when speed is reported as lower than max board speed, it's correct, but,
as usual, exceptions to this were found during testing.
3. usually if drive is faster than board speed, it reports board speed, but, again,
exceptions to this rule were found during testing.
However, with this said, it's usually more or less right, at least right in terms
of the fastest speed you can expect to get with your board. NVMe was also supported,
that's much more complicated because NVMe has >= 1 lane, and each lane has up and
down data. The reported speed is max in one direction, and is a function of the
PCIe 1,2 20% overhead, and PCIe 3,4,5 ~1.5% overhead. inxi shows the actual usable
data rate, not the GT/s rate, which is the total transfers per second the unit
supports.
So due to the unreliable nature of the data, this is only a -xx option. There is
also in general no data for USB, and none for mmcblk (sd cards usually).
This feature may be enhanced with a C Perl XS library in the future, we'll see how
that goes.
FIXES:
1. corrected an issue where a networking card of type Bridge failed to be detected.
This is now handled. This was a PCI type I'd never seen before, but it exists, and
a user had it, so now it will work as expected for this type.
2. changed the default units in weather to be m (metric) imperial (i). While this is
not very intuitive for me, it's easier to explain I think. The previous c / f
syntax is supported internally, and inxi will just translate c to m and f to i, so
it doesn't matter which is or was used on a config file or with the --weather-unit
option.
3. BSD uptime had a parsing glitch, there was a spelling variant I'd never seen in
GNU/Linux that broke the regex. This is corrected now.
4. Fixed a few small man page glitches, some ordering stuff, nothing major.
5. Fixed BSD hostname issues. There was a case where a setup could have no hostname,
inxi did not handle that correctly. This fix would have applied to gnu/linux as
well.
6. Fixed a few bsd, openbsd mostly, dm detections, there is a secondary path in
OpenBSD that was not checked. This also went along with refactoring the dm logic
to be much more efficient and optimized.
7. Fine tuned dmidecode error message.
8. Fixed PCI ID issue, it was failing to catch a certain bridged network type.
9. A more global fix for unhandled tmpfs types, in this case, shm, but added a
global test that will handle all tmpfs from now on, and exclude that data from
-p reports.
NEW FEATURES:
1. First attempt to add basic disk speed (Gb/s). Supported types: ATA, NVMe. No
speed data so far handled or found: mmcblk; USB. Also possibly older /dev/hda
type devices (IDE bus) may not get handled in all cases. This may get more work
in the future, but that's a long ways off. This case oddly was one where BSDs had
support for basic disk speed reports before GNU/Linux, but that was really just
because it was part of a single data line that inxi parsed for disk data anyway
with BSDs.
2. Man items added for -Dxx disk speed options.
The main reason to release this earlier than I had hoped was because of the /sys
permission change for serial/uuid file data. The earlier we can get this fix out,
the better for end users, otherwise they will think they have no serial data when
they really do.
FIXES:
1. this bug just came to my attention, apparently the (I assume) kernel people
decided for us that we don't need to see our serial numbers in /sys unless we are
root. This is an unfortunate but sadly predictable event. To work around this
recent change (somewhere between 4.14 and 4.15 as far as I can tell), inxi -M and
-B now check for root read-only and show <root required> if the file exists but
is not user readable. I wish, I really wish, that people could stop changing stuff
for no good reason, but that's out of my control, all I can do is adjust inxi to
this reality. But shame on whoever decided that was a good idea.
This is not technically an inxi bug, but rather a regression, since it's caused
by a change in /sys permissions, but users would see it as a bug so I consider
this an important fix.
Note that the new /sys/class/dmi/id permissions result in various possible things:
1. serial/uuid file is empty but exists and is not readable by user
2. serial/uuid file is not empty and exists and is not readable by user
3. serial/uuid file does not exist
4. serial/uuid file exists, is not empty, and is readable by root
Does this change make your life better? It doesn't make mine better, it makes
it worse. Consider filing a bug report against whoever allowed this regression
is my suggestion.
BUGS:
1. A weather bug could result in odd or wrong data showing in weather output, this
was due to a mistake in how the weather data was assembled internally. This error
could lead to large datastore files, and odd output that is not all correct.
2. More of an enhancement, but due to the way 'v' is used in version numbers,
the program_version tool in some cases could have sliced out a 'v' in the wrong
place in the version string, and also could have sliced out legitimate v values.
This v issue also appeared in bios version, so now the new rule for program_version
and certain other version results is to trim off starting v if and only if it is
followed by a number.
FEATURES:
1. Added in OpenBSD support for showing machine data without having to use dmidecode.
This is a combination of systcl -a and dmesg.boot data, not very good quality data
sources, but it is available as user, and it does work. Note that BIOS systems
are the only ones tested, I don't know what the syntax for UEFI is for the field
names and strings. Coming soon is Battery and Sensors data, from the same sources.
Sadly as far as I know, OpenBSD is the only BSD that has such nice, usable (well,
ok, dmesg.boot data is low quality strings, not really machine safe) data. I
have no new datasets from the other BSDs so I don't know if they have decided to
copy/emulate this method.
2. By request, and this was listed in issue #134, item no. 1, added in weather
switchable metric/imperial output. Also added an option, --weather-unit and
configuration item: WEATHER_UNIT with possible values: cf|fc|c|f. The 2nd of
two in cf/fc goes in () in the output. Note that windspeed is m/s or km/h as metric,
inxi shows m/s as default for metric and (km/h as secondary). Also fixed -w
observation date to use local time formatting. That does not work in -W so it shows
the default value.
3. Updated man to show new WEATHER_UNIT config option, and new --weather-unit
option. Also fixed some other small man glitches that I had missed.
This is a big one.
NEW FEATURES:
1. By Request: Disk vendor is now generally going to be shown. Since this uses
empirical data to grab the vendor name, from the model string, it will not always
find anything. When it fails to find vendor data, no vendor: item will show.
Note that some MMC devices will probably not show vendor data, but that's due to
there being no data that reveals that.
2. Extended -sx volts to also show voltage from lm-sensors if present. Many
systems show no voltage data with lm-sensors, but now if any is found, it
will show, same as impi.
3. Moved to lsblk as primary source for partition/unmounted filesystem, uuid, and
label data.
Falls back to previous methods if lsblk does not return data. Some lsblk do not
show complete data unless super user as well.
4. Refactored code to be more logical and clear.
5. Added for OpenBSD -r: /etc/installurl file.
BUG FIXES:
1. CRITICAL: /sys/block/xxx/device/model is in some cases truncating the disk
model name to 16 characters. This is not an inxi bug, it's a bug with /sys itself.
To fix this, inxi now uses for GNU/Linux /dev/disk/by-id data which does not
ever do this truncation. It's also faster I believe to read that directory
once, filter the results, then use the data for vendor/model/serial.
this was also part of the disk vendor data feature.
2. Openbsd networking fix. Was not showing IF data, now it does.
3. Fixed bug with unmounted where sometimes md0 type partitions would show
even though they are in a raid array.
4. Fixed disk rev, now it searches for 3 different files in /sys to get that data.
5. Fixed bug with very old systems, with sudo 1.6 or older, for some reason that
error did not get redirected to /dev/null, so now only using sudo -n after explicit
version test, only if 1.7 or newer.
6. Fixed a few null results in fringe cases for graphics. Resolution now shows
NA for Hz if no hz data found. This was only present on a fringe user case
which is unlikely to ever impact normal X installations.
7. Fixed BSD L2 cache, was showing MiB instead of KiB, wrong math.
Bugs fixed:
1. CPU: MT/HT was wrong for old xeon, made mt detection more robust and hopefully
more reliable, removed all explicit b_xeon based tests.
2. fixed /dev/mapper glitch, that make /dev/mapper links fail to get id'ed.
3. openbsd: fixed memory handler; fixed cpu flags, fixed partitions handling.
4. freebsd: fixed similar partition bugs, these were caused by the darwin patch.
5. man page: fixed top synopis syntax, thanks ESR.
6. partitions fs: fixed possible failures with lsblk fs. lsblk: added debuggers
so we can track down this failure in the future.
7. added sshfs filter for disk used output, note, there is a possible syntax for
remote fs that isn't handled: AAA:BBB that is, no :/, only the :. This makes
explicit detection of still unknown remote fs very difficult since : is a legal
nix filename character.
1. Added to -s for ipmi, with -x: voltage 12v,5v,3.3v,vbat; for -xx, dimm/soc p1/p2
voltages
2. enhanced wm: feature, needed more filters and protection against redundant data
3. basic apple osx fixes to keep it from crashing, but I'm not spending any more
time on apple junk unless someone pays me for my time, I can't stand the product or
company, it's the total antitheses of freedom or free software, or even openness.
4. openbsd/bsd fixes: openbsd was failing to get cpu flags due to a small oversight
5. -C now shows bits: for the true bits of cpu, not the kernel bits. This is not
a reliable measurement but should be right about 95+ percent of the time, and
basically all of the time for GNU/Linux on Intel/AMD, most of the time for ARM.
When it doesn't know it does not guess, and shows N/A.
6. bsd fix for usb, was running numeric action on string value
7. fixed stderr tool for program_version, now it's hard-coded in program_values
which removes an unneded regex search for every program version test.
8. Mate detection, switched to using mate-sesssion instead of mate-about, the
latter is not getting updated and has the wrong version number on it.
bad array looping error.
2. for issue #143, added user PATH to static list of paths, this works around distros
that have chosen to abandon the FSH standard, sigh... This adds to number of paths that
have to be checked, but there was no clean way to handle it otherwise.
3. For MATE, added new version source, mate-session, because mate-about was reporting
a non-matching version number for current MATE.
Two enhancements/bug fixes:
1. inxi did not have support for network block devices /dev/nbd0 type syntax in
disks.
2. this caused a slight failure in lsblk output, so I switched to using lsblk -P
to force paired key values, which are then put into an array of hashes.
These both appeared on an ARM server system, but surprisingly, there were no ARM
specific issues at all on that system.
Both issues/enhancements tested and working fine.
Rolls up a few changes from the latest features:
1. For -Dxxx, if root, will use fdisk to try to find partition table scheme (mbr/gpt)
2. For Display: <protocol> server: will try to use loginctl if out of X and using
--display flag to force display data and not root.
This completes more or less the very last minute features added pre 3.0.0 version.
I wanted to get these in because the features were not super useful since they only
worked on a few systems, particulary the scheme:
New features:
1. for a very few systems that have wmctrl installed, will shows -xxx wm if present
Enhancements:
1. made xorg display server and protocols show more consistently with other layout:
Display: x11 server: X.org 1.9.12 drivers: loaded: ...
if no display protocol found:
Display: server: X.org 1.9.12 drivers: loaded: ...
This brings the -G in line with the other lines, of not putting different data types
inside of parentheses as much as possible. -I still has two of these, but so far it's
not clear how to otherwise show SSH or su/sudo/login in their respective spaces.
Debugger data collector also has something I should have added ages ago, gz filename
now includes the basic 2 digit inxi version number, like 3.0 at end, so I can readily
determine the debugger inxi version, and thus avoid having to root through lots of
versions to find new stuff.
These are all largely cosmetic improvements, or debugger adjustments, except for -Sxxx
now offering wm: if present.
Also changed Desktop: name... (toolkit data) to: Desktop: name... tk: toolkit data
to be more consistent, while not adding great length to the output.
These two changes should also help export to json/xml since that puts unique key/values
back into key value pairs, not merging two together.
inxi 3.0 is now ready for prime time. No substantial issues have been found over
the past week. All outstanding issues and bugs have been corrected. The man page
and help page have been edited fairly heavily to improve usability and readablity.
All work and development and support for inxi 2.3.56 is ended. No issues for
2.3.56 will be accepted since there is no way to support that version, it
being in a different set of languages (Gawk/Bash) than inxi 2.9/3.0 (Perl 5).
So the sooner you move your distro package pool to new inxi, the sooner your
users can get support for any issues with current inxi.
Beta and 2.9 prerelease testing is completed, and has resulted in a much
better inxi than I could have hoped for.
There are so many new features and enhancements in the new inxi that it's hard
to list them all. See previous commits for a more in depth record.
1. New options: --slots (PCI Slots); --usb
2. Exports to json/xml with --output options
3. Every line has been enhanced, with tighter output control, better key / value
pairings, more accurate values.
4. Line wrapping is now fully dynamic, which means inxi works down to 80 columns
and should basically never wrap (except for very long repo lines, but that's not
really fixable).
5. More controls, more user configuration options (see man page).
6. So many small new features that it's hard to list them all. Shows SSH in -I
if SSH. Shows sudo/su/login in -I if relevant and detectable. Shows disk partioning
scheme in some cases (more coming). Removes color codes if piped or redirected to
file.
7. All sizes are now shown in standardized KiB/MiB/GiB/TiB/PiB format, to avoid
ambiguity about whether M or MB or MiB is meant. All internal size math is done
using KiB, which further avoids confusion and error. Note that many disk makers
like using MB or GB instead of MiB or GiB because it makes their disks seem
'bigger'.
8. Sensors -s now supports IPMI sensors, in tandem with lm-sensors.
Anyway, the changelog will show better all the new features etc, I can't remember
them all.
All current issues and glitches have been fixed, any remaining are simply new issues,
just as they would be in old inxi.
Note that in the second and third weeks of beta testing a significant number of bugs
that are in inxi 2.3.56 were fixed. 2.3.56 has been moth-balled into the inxi-legacy
branch as binxi, to avoid mixing it up with inxi. The development branch is now
permanently inxi-perl, aka, pinxi, since that worked so well for beta and pre-3.0
2.9 testing and development.
This ends the pinxi/inxi development stage. All future development will proceed
using the inxi-perl branch, and will be the same in terms of new features as pre
inxi 2.9 was, they will be added, enhanced, as seems appropriate.
Remember, inxi is a rolling release program, like Arch Linux, Gentoo, Debian
Testing/Sid, and has no frozen release points, so this is simply the beginning of the
3.0 line of Perl inxi.
Thanks to everyone who contributed time, energy, effort, ideas, testing, debugging,
patience - inxi would not work without you.
like --sleep and -t.
Edits to layout and language, removed some legacy options and language from man and
inxi.
Added partition table detections, rough initial stage. Only works on systems with
udev present currently, will be expanded as we find fast tools. Since the systemd
method is literally up to 25x slower than the udev method, it's not being considered
except maybe as a last, last resort, and probably will never be used.
Many small bugs fixed.
Enhancements:
1. in some cases, will detect partition table type (GTP,MBR) either
with or without root. Uses fast method, which is not available on all systems.
2. Added IPMI sensors tools ipmitool and ipmi-sensors to -s for systems that
use IPMI.
3. Finished man page edits and corrections. Thanks Pete.
4. Added doubled word filter for main -NGA lines, only for Card items.
5. Gave more granular uptime output: like: uptime: 23d 5h 34m
Bugs fixed:
1. RAID - both mdraid and zfs bugs corrected. Issue #135
2. EPYC cpu wrong die count corrected, and also added support for the EPYC type.
Issue #135
3. Possible ARM data glitch that made reader fail on a non-existent file.
Man:
Ongoing updates and edits and corrections and cleanup. Slowly but surely.
1. Bug: cause unknown, but crashes on null file sent to reader, but all those files
have been checked. For now added return if file null.
2. Features: with -Ixxx: show Shell: csh (sudo|su|login) status; show
running in: xfce-terminal (SSH)
ssh session active on remote system.
Various help and man cleanups and additions.
Bugs fixed:
1. stray undefined value corrected
2. fixed BSD no pkg server case, now shows correctly that no pkg server files
were found, not that the OS is not supported.
Features:
1. -t c and m headers cleaned up and simplified
2. man page edits.
3. more standarization of key names for fields, some spelling
and upper/lower case corrections.
Bugs fixed:
1. json/xml outputter had a bug in it that made it validate path wrong.
2. -G -xx option: compositor: for gnome-shell had a bug that would make it show
as running when it wasn't, other strings were tripping the match on systems with
gnome-shell installed but not running,
3. Finally fixed bug with manjaro full version distro string, and tweaked output
to show Manjaro Linux instead of given string.
Features added:
1. --no-man - this lets users turn off man installs. Only really useful for -U
from master, since default is off for pinxi and dev 3 branch.
Man page/help updated to add this option.
Man features new section, configuration options, which lists the main config options
users would be likely to use.
This should help users who will never check the actual documentation web page
realize that there are many internal configuration options available.
Many edits in man, more to come I suspect.
Bug fixes in inxi:
1. removed a few stray debuggers that were creating debugging output
2. fixed a usb driver bug that would create warning messages from Perl (thanks Manjaro
for finding that one)
New Option:
1. Added: --indent-min - goes with the user configuration option: INDENT_MIN
and allows users to experiment with different indent settings. This is what trips the
auto line wrap of line starters. This may be revisited, and this switch will make it
easier for users to see for themselves which they prefer, what trip point, etc.
This will help determine pre 3.0.0 what the default auto wrap trip point, if any,
will be.
Added more data to debugger tool, more lsblk, which is going to need a lot more data
to solve a new issue with dm/encrypt/lvm, initial $MANPAGE data, to see if anyone
actually ever uses that environmental variable.
Special thanks to Manjaro for being as far as I know the first to package Perl inxi.
To get rid of some non-intuitive options, I've changed some of the --alt values
to more obvious argument names; --dmidecode --no-ssl --no-host --host
This makes them easier to remember, hopefully.
Updated help, man pages to cover this change as well.
Added some more lsblk debugger output to try to start building enough information to
really figure out dm/encrypted/lvm and how those are actually handled internally in
the system in terms of partitions, filesystems, etc.
features.
So now inxi and pinxi will grab the inxi.1 or pinxi.1 man file and install it on
systems that do not have -U blocked. The -U block of course remains the same.
New features:
1. now does not require root or 'file' to get unmounted fs type. Also, for many
mounted partitions, rather than showing the meaningless fuseblock it will usually
get the filesystem right.
2. -U now works with optional --man option to download man page for pinxi
and -U 3 dev server updates. This gets around the fact I had to remove the gz files
from master to get the size small enough to make maintainers happy. Non branch
inxi master works as before, updates both from github or from dev server, depending
on your selection.
3. Thanks very much to the people who have been contributing in a positve way,
helping to make inxi better. The untold number of small and large new features,
small glitches, etc, that have been fixed this week are simply too many too list.
Many to most were inxi bugs or weaknesses, now corrected.
4. binxi branch has now been made fully operational, though I do not plan on doing
any work beyond the mothballing of that venerable program (gawk->bash inxi), it's
fully operational, it updates, it gets its man page, but all as binxi, so you can,
as with pinxi, run all of them separately. This officially terminates my support
for Gawk/Bash inxi, which can be found as binxi in the inxi-legacy branch.
5. pinxi has been promoted to permanent development branch, where bug fixes, new
features, etc, will be tested, along with man page updates etc. This will help
reduce the number of commits to master branch.
6. Audio / Network usb cards now show the true driver(s). There are often more
than one for audio, that's a nice enancement.
7. inxi outputs to json / xml, which will probably interest some developers
eventually, well it already did, that was going to wait, but someone wanted it.
8. Apt repo handler now supports DEB822 format, which is not an easy format to
parse.
==========================================================
MAINTAINERS:
Note the following: despite my strong dislike for tags, every commit that touches
either inxi or inxi.1 man page will be tagged if I think they would be something
relevant to distro packagers. While github insists on calling my tags releases,
I want to be crystal clear: inxi has one and only one 'release', the current master
branch version. The tagged commits that github calls releases are NOT releases,
they are just tagged commits. The version I release tomorrow will be the current
master, and all previous versions will be obsolete and will not be supported.
The .gz files have been removed from the master branch history, thus shrinking it
a lot. I have removed for this reason the master-plain branch, which mirrored
master and provided a gz free branch, but apparently this was simply ignored so
there's no reason to keep it going. If you insist on grabbing all the branches and
find more data in there, then please correct your practices, you are only getting
the data from the master branch.
inxi is rolling release software and has no releases, so the tags are supposed
to create some illusion that a tag actually means something. Since it doesn't,
I decided to take the path of least resistance and just add an auto tagging tool
to my commit scripts and use it when it seems appropriate, like on this commit.
All development work now will happen via the pinxi branch, so that makes the process
a lot cleaner, since I can now basically beta test all new commmits to master.
pinxi and binxi are both standalone versions of inxi, they have their own config
and data directories, config files, man pages, etc.
-----------------------------------------------------
New Perl inxi is already way ahead of Gawk/Bash inxi, more features, more accurate,
and most bugs being fixed now are because a lot of people are contributing eyes and
testing, and are finding stuff that was wrong, or simply missing, on old inxi as
well as on Perl inxi. Fixes to Perl inxi (>2.9) will not be rolled into to binxi
since the entire reason I spent over 4 months on this project was to never have to
touch Gawk/Bash inxi again.
Most imporant, however, is that the simple fact was, Gawk/Bash inxi has been
nearly impossible to work on despite my following rigorous practices in coding,
and I simply won't work with that type of stuff anymore. Perl 5.x is a true delight
in comparison, and makes adding new features, enhancing others, far easier, or
even possible, where it wasn't before.
On a technical level, I have tested Perl inxi heavily, and it will run on all
Perl 5.x versions back to 5.008, which is the cutoff point. This was not that
hard to do, which is why I picked Perl 5.x as the language. This means that
you can drop, just as with binxi, Perl inxi onto a 10 year old system, or
older, and it will run fine, albeit a touch slowly, but must faster than binxi.
-----------------------------------------------------
So far users are really liking the new one, it's usually faster in most cases,
the output is cleaner, there's more data, more options, and basically it's
gotten the thumbs up from all the testers, and there have been a LOT, who have
helped. I want to give a special thanks to the following distros for their
exceptional support and testing:
0. the people who hang out on irc.oftc.net #smxi. Very patient, will test things
with astounding patience, so thanks to them. Archerseven, iotaka and KittyKatt
have been been incredibly helpful when it comes to testing and debugging, and
finding corner cases that I would never have found.
1. AntiX: they were the first to beta test pinxi, and found massive numbers of
bugs, and stuck with the testing for a long time. They made testing possible for
the next wave of testers, my hats off to them, I've always liked them.
2. Manjaro also was very helpful, and found more issues and enhancements.
3. Ubuntu forums users found more, and helped enhance many faetures
4. Mint users have been very helpful, and were the impetus for some nifty
new features, ilke switching all color codes off when output is piped or sent
to file. They have reminded me of how valuable people's views can be who may not
share the same tech world view as you, but are still very talented and observant
individuals.
5. Slackware users provided some very thoughtful feedback, which was no surprise
but welcome nonetheless, thanks.
6. Same with Debian forums, again, some very useful and constructive ideas and
observations, and some very arcane and odd hardware that exposed even more corner
case bugs.
And several other distros were also helpful, each in their own way. Solus for
example now has their package manager added in repos.
and a small bug for blank files there.
Second, made the --output error message more clear for bad file structure now lists
the 3 requirements: must be full path, must be writeable directory, and must have
a file in it.
Third, another subtle thing, after a lot of research, am trying the MiB GiB format
because it's technically more accurate and less ambiguous than GB, which is used
either to refer to 1000 bite blocks OR to 1024 blocks, depending on the platform etc.
So rather than hope people get it, trying that slightly more wordy format, and maybe
if people wonder what it is.
It's here! Perl inxi, first official release. So many changes, really too many
to list.
But here's a few:
1. of course, full rewrite to Perl 5.x. Supports as old as 5.008, as new as current.
2. Better line length nandlers. Fully dynamic, robust, shrinks and expands to fit
either taste or viewport.
3. Long options for all options now, plus of course the short options everyone
is used to.
4. New options: --usb; --slots (pci slot report); --sleep (change cpu sleep time);
and many more. Check --help or man page for details.
5. Vastly improved --recommends, now does per distro package recommends, and shows
only Linux data to Linux systems, and BSD data to BSD systems.
6. Hugely improved debugger as well.
7. Far more accurate output, most output is now in key/value pairs, because:
8. inxi now exports to json and xml! See --output/--output-file for info.
9. Enhancedd repo output, added deb822 type, solus
10. Radically enhanced network data, now shows all IP / IF devices connected to
each nic, not just one, both IP v4 and v6.
11. USB audio and network device actual drivers
12. better handling of compiler data.
13. Basic ARM machine data now, if present to inxi
14. Graphics: per card driver info alongside the original xorg drivers.
15. Better integration of partitions, RAID, unmounted partitions, and HDD data.
16. Better sensors handling of free video driver sensor data, well, not better,
it's now there, along with fan speeds for gpus.
17. RAID is enhanced, and now can show > 1 RAID type on a system, and the RAID
is improved.
18. Much improved disk/partition/memory sizing, inxi now always works internally
with KB units, and changes them on output to the appropriate units.
19. Fully redone man page for all the new options and the long options.
And so much more. Anyway, here it is, the first release.
2018-03-19 release. I'm putting the last issue requests on the last forums,
so assuming no real further bugs found, expect Perl inxi 2.9.01 to hit around
Monday or Tuesday. If any bugs are found, of course, those will be fixed before
release of the new Perl inxi.
Basically, if you want to see if you can find bugs, this is the time to do it, not
AFTER release. I've posted on many forums, and have given the various distros a
chance to help squash the bugs their users might see, some have been fantastic
(AntiX, you were the best by far), others, not so much. Their loss in the latter
case since the purpose of beta testing is to find bugs before, not after, release.
If you want to see the differences in recommends, and dependencies, grab pinxi
development branch here:
wget -O pinxi https://github.com/smxi/inxi/raw/inxi-perl/pinxi
or:
git clone https://github.com/smxi/inxi --branch inxi-perl --single-branch
and run: pinxi --recommends
The main thing I'd strongly urge all maintainers to add, for long term stability
and speed and reliability, is dig, which can be used if present to get very fast,
reliable, WAN IP information.
All of the other recommends are pretty much the same, for graphics, xdpyinfo,
xrandr, and glxinfo. For networking, ip or ifconfig, along with dig. For all usb
related identification, lsusb, unfortunately, I wish I could get rid of that tool,
it's very slow, but I can't. The --recommends output shows the complete set.
Obviously, Bash and Gawk are no longer recommends, nor are the tools like grep,
sed, tr, wc, etc, all those are done with Perl, so any shell plus Perl 5.08 or
newer Perl 5.x is all that's really required, beyond normal system reporting
tools like lspci etc.
For json/xml export, two Perl modules are needed, again, see --recommends
Making sure tarball etc is up to date, so it can be stored in 'tarball's branch.
MAINTAINERS:
Pinxi 2.9.00-xxx-p (inxi-perl branch) is nearing completion of its beta test cycle,
and, barring any new issues or bugs (TEST IT NOW AND REPORT ISSUES NOW!), I expect
to release pinxi 2.9.00 as inxi 2.9.01 shortly after I complete the advanced
RAID feature, which should be this week.
If no real issues appear during the following week after the inxi 2.9.0 release, it
will be moved to inxi 3.0.0, as the first stable Perl inxi release.
There will be a new branch, inxi-legacy, that will have the Gawk->Bash inxi 2.3..56
files for historical purposes only. No further work will be done on inxi 2.3 from
now on.
cpu output issues. Now inxi handles > 8 cores in terms of output filters,
descriptions, correctly noting that it's multithreaded.
Because AMD has entered the Multithreading game, I've changed the trade term:
HT - HyperThreading to MT - MultiThreading to support both Intel and AMD variants.
Updated CPU output filters to also account for these very large core counts.
I believe this commit now adds full support for the new Ryzen series, but I'll have
to see when it comes to other variants that may appear. I've tried to future proof
the MT tests, but I won't know of those are fully functional and accurate until
inxi sees the real data.
Because I don't want to break existing cpu logic, I just added in a rizen switch,
which will just use cpu_core_count value, then trigger HT output.
This fix may or may not work, but the issue poster vanished and has not followed up.
For now I'm keeping this a Ryzen specific adjustment, but it may be safe to extend
it further, that is, if siblings > 1 && siblings = 2 * cores then it's HT.
issue a forum poster raised, which is the fact that despite the fact that GNU/Linux
has had reasonably ok zfs support for years now, inxi only tested for zfs on bsd
systems.
This has been corrected. Due to the complexity of handling software raid, inxi
will now test first for ZFS data, if none is found, it will then test for
/proc/mdstat.
In a perfect world I'd like to have full dynamic Raid support, but I'm missing
all the key ingredients required to add that:
1. systems to test on
2. software raid, I don't use it
3. data collection for non mdraid and zfs software raid, including the values
possible to gather from all non software raid.
Basically, the only way I'd extend -R raid option is if I get direct ssh access to
a machine that uses the alternate software raid type, otherwise it would take
forever to figure out the options.
Since the number of people who might be actually running zfs and mdraid and
using inxi probably numbers in the 10 globally, I figured this solution was a fine
way to handle adding zfs without messing up mdraid, which is more common on linux.
It also does not break BSDs, since bsds as far as I know don't use mdraid, and don't
have /proc/mdraid in the first place.
Also redid the man page to add -! 41, -! 42, -! 43, -! 44 options, which bypass
curl, fetch, wget, and all of them, respectively. Plus making the lines less wide.
That should make those people who actually use 80 column wide vi as an editor
happy, lol.
