===================================================================================== Version: 3.3.00 Patch: 00 Date: 2021-01-28 ----------------------------------- Changes: ----------------------------------- Bug fixes!! New Feature!! Edits, cleanups!! Bugs: 1. Small bug, wrong regex would make mdraid unused report never show. Was looking for ^used, not ^unused. No idea how that happened, but it's fixed. 2. Big RAID bug. Due to never having seen an 'inactive' state mdraid dataset, inxi had a bunch of bugs around that. I'd assumed active and inactive would have roughly the same syntax, but they don't. This is now corrected. Thanks Solus user for giving me the required data. This case when not corrected resulted in a spray of errors as RAID ran, and a fairly incomplete RAID report for mdraid. 3. A bug that probably never impacted anyone, but in SMART the matching rules failed to match field name Size[s]? in the logical/physical block sizes. However, those were already coming in from I believe pre-existing /sys data for the drives but now it's fixed anyway. I had not realized that smartctl made it plural when logical/physical were different, and singular when they were the same. 4. Failed to use all possible sd block device major number matches, which led to false disk total/used reports, that is, totals less than used. Fixes: 1. Going along with bug 2, fixed some other admin/non admin report glitches. Made patterns more aggressively matching, whitelist based to avoid the types of syntax issues that caused bug 2. 2. Added 'faulty' type to mdraid matches, that had not been handled. 3. Found even more of those pesky 'card' references in help and man page, replaced all of them with 'device[s]'. 4. Subtle fix, for debugger data collectors, added -y1 support, which can be useful at times. Enhancements: 1. In USB data grabber, added fallback case for unspecified type cases, now uses a simple name/driver string test to determine if it's graphics, audio, or bluetooth. This was mainly to make sure bluetooth usb devices get caught. 2. New feature! -E/--bluetooth. Gives an -n like bluetooth Device-x/Report. Requires for the 'Report:' part hciconfig, which most all distros still have in their repos. With -a, shows an additional Info: line that has more obscure bluetooth hci data: acl-mtu sco-mtu, link-policy, link-mode, service-classes. This closes the ancient, venerable issue #79, filed by mikaela so many years ago. Better late than never!! However, features like this were really difficult in legacy bash/gawk inxi 2.x, and became fairly easy with inxi 3.x, so I guess we'll slowly whittle away at these things when the mood, and global pandemic lockdowns, make that seem like a good idea... Includes a small lookup table to match LMP number to Bluetooth version (bt-v:), hopefully that's a correct way to determine bluetooth version, there was some ambiguity about that. -x, -xx, and -xxx function pretty much the same way as with -A, -G, and -N devices, adding Chip IDs, Bus IDs, version info, and so on. Since this bluetooth report does not require root and is an upper case option, it's been added to default -F, similar to -R, and -v 5, where raid/bluetooth shows only if data is found. With -v7 or -R or -E, always shows, including no data found message. Includes a fallback report Report-ID: case where for some reason, inxi could not match the HCI ID with the device. That's similar to IF-ID in -n, which does the same when some of the IFs could not be matched to a specific device. 3. For -A, -G, -N, and -E, new item for -xxx, classID, I realized this is actually useful for many cases of trying to figure out what devices are, though most users would not know what to do with that information, but that's why it's an -xxx option! 4. Yes! You've been paying attention!! More disk vendors, and new vendor IDs!! The cornucopia flows its endless bounty over the grateful data collector, and, hopefully, inxi users!! Thanks as always, linux-lite hardware database, and linux-lite users who really seem set on the impossible project of obtaining all the disks/vendors known to man. Changes: 1. Small change in wording for mdraid report: 'System supported mdraid' becomes 'Supported mdraid levels' which is cleaner and much more precise. ----------------------------------- -- Harald Hope - Thu, 28 Jan 2021 19:34:17 -0800 ===================================================================================== Version: 3.2.02 Patch: 00 Date: 2021-01-10 ----------------------------------- Changes: ----------------------------------- New version, man page, bug fixes, changes, adjustments and cleanups!!! Special thanks to mr. mazda for his ongoing suggestions, ideas, and observations. Bugs: 1. In certain corner cases, it appears that lsusb has blank lines, which tripped errors in inxi output when the usb parser was trying to access split keys that did not exist. Added in check to make sure split actually resulted in expected data. 2. A red face bug, I'd left the output debugger switched on with json output, so it was printing out the json data structure with Dumper, that's now switched off. Hope this doesn't mess anyone up, but it would have mattered only if the person was using: --output json --output-type print It did not effect xml output. Fixes: 1. Got rid of extra level of -L data structure and output handler. Not visible to users, but still irksome, so nice to get that fixed. Recursive structures are confusing, lol, but this extra level was pointless, but to fix it required redoing the logic a bit for both data generator and output feature. 2. Added in support for --display :0.0, previously it did not support the .0 addition, but why not, if it works for people, good, if not, makes no difference. 3. There were some missing cases for LVM missing data messages, so the following fixes were added: * In cases where lsblk is installed and user is non root, or lvs is not installed, but no lvm data is present, inxi now shows the expected 'Message: No LVM data found.' instead of the permissions or missing program error that showed before. If lsblk is not installed, and lvm is installed (or missing), with lvs not root readable, the permissiosn message (or missing program) will show since at that point, inxi has no way to know if there is lvm data or not. * Not an inxi, but rather an Arch Linux packaging bug, the maintainer of lvm has made lvs and vgs fail to return error number on non root start, which is a bug (pvs does return expected error return). Rather than wait for this bug to be fixed, inxi will just test if lvs and lsblk lvm data, it will show permissions message, otherwse the no lvm data message as expected. I think these cover the last unhandled LVM cases I came across, so ideally, the lvm data messages will be reasonably correct. 4. Some man page lintian fixes. 5. Changed usb data parser to use 'unless' instead of 'if' in tests since it's easier to read unless positive tests are true than if negative or negative etc. Enhancements: 1. Since I see too often things like -F --no-host -z which is redundant, the help and man now make it more clear that -z implies --no-host. 2. Even though it's not that pointful, I added in derived Arch Linux system base like Ubuntu/Debian have. It's not that meaningful because unlike Ubuntu/Debian, where you want to know what version the derived distro is based on, Arch is rolling thus no versions, but I figured, why not, it's easy to do, so might as well make the system base feature a bit more complete. Note that the way I did this requires that the distro is ID'ed as its derived distro nanme, not Arch Linux, that will vary depending on how they did their os-release etc, or distro files, but that's not really an inxi issue, that's up to them. From what I've been seeing, it looks like more of the derived distros are being ID'ed in inxi as the derived name, so those should all work fine. Note that seeing 'base:' requires -Sx. 3. More disk vendors!! More disk vendor IDs!!! I really dug into the stuff, and refactored slightly the backend tools I use, so it's now a bit easier to handle the data. Thanks linux-lite hardware database, as always, for having users that really seemt to use every disk variant known to humanity. Changes: 1. In -G, made FAILED: lower case, and also moved it to be after unloaded: It was too easy to think that the loaded driver had failed. Also to make it more explicit, made output like this, in other words, driver: is a container for the possible children: loaded: unloaded: failed: alternate: which should be easier to parse and read without mixing up what belongs to what. driver: loaded: modesetting unloaded: nouvean,vesa alternate: nv driver: loaded: amdgpu unloaded: vesa failed: ati Note that if there is no unloaded: driver, failed: would still appear to come after loaded:, but hopefully it's more clear now. Basically what we found was that the presence of the uppercase FAILED: drew the eye so much that it was sometimes not noted that it was a key: following the driver: item, which itself because it did not list explicitly loaded: was not as clear as it could have been. By making failed: the same as the other key names visually, hopefully it will be less easy to think that the loaded: driver failed: In a sense, this is a legacy issue, because the original use of FAILED: was for non free video drivers, to see when xorg had failed to load them, but over more recent years, the most frequent thing I have been seeing is odd things like failed: ati, when xorg tries to load the legacy ati driver when amdgpu is being used. 2. Likewise, for RAID mdraid and zfs changed FAILED: to Failed:, again, to make it more consistent with the other types. 3. In help menu and man page, removed legacy 'card(s)' in -A, -G, -N, and replaced that with 'device(s)', which is the more accurate term, since the days when these things were only addon cards are long behind us. I had not noticed that, but it caught me eye and I realized it was a very deprecated and obsolete syntax, which did not match the way inxi describes devices today. 4. It was pointed out how incoherent the naming of the item for setting wrap width, --indent-min and config item INDENT_MIN were super confusing, since it was neither indent or minimum, it was in fact wrap maximum, so the new options and config items are --wrap-max and WRAP_MAX. Note that the legacy values will keep working, but it was almost impossible in words to explain this option because the option text was almost the exact opposite of what the option actually does. Redid the man and help explanations to make the function of this option/config item more clear. 5. Made -J/--usb Hub-xx: to fit with other repeating device types in inxi output, before Hub: was not numbered, but it struck me, it should be, like all the other auto-incremented counter line starters, like ID-xx:, Device-x:, and so on. 6. Reorganized the main help menu to hopefully be more logical, now it shows the primary output triggers, then after, the extra data items, -a, -x, -xx, -xxx, separated by white space per type to make it easier to read. This also moved the stuff that had been under the -x items back to where they should be, together with the main output control options. For readability and usability, I think this will help, the help menu is really long, so the more visual cues it has to make it clear what each section is, the better I think. Previously -a was the first items, then way further down was -x, -xx, and -xxx, then under those was -z, -Z, -y. ----------------------------------- -- Harald Hope - Sun, 10 Jan 2021 18:25:48 -0800 ===================================================================================== Version: 3.2.01 Patch: 00 Date: 2020-12-17 ----------------------------------- Changes: ----------------------------------- Bug Fixes!!! Continuing internal refactor!! This bug report came in right after 3.2.00 went out live, but I would never have found it myself in testing so better found than not found! Bugs: 1. A bug was introduced to dmidecode data handlers in 3.2.00 resulted in the dmidecode data array basically eating itself up until errors appear. Quite difficult to trigger, but babydr from Slackware forums figured it out, using -F --dmidecode to force dmidecode use for all features that support it triggered thee bug always. This was a result of the refactor, previously inxi had worked on copies of referenced arrays, but in this case, it was working on the original array of arrays, subtle, but obvious. This method was only used on dmidecode arrays. 2. A second bug was exposed almost by accident, for -M --dmidecode data, there was a missing field and also a missing is set test on that field that led to an error of using undefined value in string comparison. This was strictly speaking 2 bugs, both very old, from 2.9 first rewrite, one failing to set/get the value, and the other failing to test if the value was set before using it. Fixes: 1. There were a few glitches in help menu and man page related to -L option, those are corrected. INTERNAL CODE CHANGES: 1. removed bug inducing splice use in some cases, and added parens to splice to make it fit the new way of with perl builtins, when taking 2 or more arguments, use parens. 2. Found many more instances to add -> dereferencing operator. I have to say, not doing that consistently made the code much harder to read, and created situations where it's somewhat ambiguous what item belongs to what, with everything consistently -> operator run, the code is more clear and obvious, and some of the hacks I'd added because of the lack of clarity were also removed. 3. Removed explicit setting of hash references with null value, that was done out of failure to use -> operators which clearly indicate to Perl and coder what is happening, so those crutches were removed. Also got rid of unnecessary array priming like: my @array = (); Some of these habits came from other languages, but in Perl, declaring my @array means it's an array that is null, and you don't need to do a further (). @array = () is obviously fine for resetting arrays in loops or whatever, but not in the initial declaration. ----------------------------------- -- Harald Hope - Thu, 17 Dec 2020 14:27:13 -0800 ===================================================================================== Version: 3.2.00 Patch: 00 Date: 2020-12-15 ----------------------------------- Changes: ----------------------------------- Huge upgrade, major rewrite/refactor, new features, everything is polished!!! Note that due to large number of internal changes to code, a separate INTERNAL CODE CHANGES section is at the bottom. Those are changes which in general do not impact what users see that much, but which definitely impact working on and with inxi! They also make errors less likely, and removed many possible bad data error situations. BUGS: 1. Obscure, but very old Tyan Mobo used a form of dmidecode data for RAM that I'd never gotten a dataset for before, this tripped a series of errors in inxi, which were actually caused by small errors and failures to check certain things, as well as simply never assigning data in corner cases. This system used only dmi handles 5 and 6, which is a very rare setup, from the very early days of dmi data being settled, but it was valid data, and actually inxi was supposed to support it, because I'd never gotten a dataset containing such legacy hardware data, the support didn't work. There were actually several bugs discovered while tracking this down, all were corrected. 2. Going along with the cpu fixes below, there was a bug that if stepping was 0, stepping would not show. I had not realized stepping could be 0, so did a true/false test instead of a defined test, which makes 0 in perl always test as false. This is corrected. 3. While going through code, discovered that missing second argument to main::grabber would have made glabel tool (BSD I think mostly) always fail, without exception. That explains why bsd systems were never getting glabel data, heh. 4. Many null get_size tests would not have worked because they were testing for null array but ('','') was actually being returned, which is not a null array. The testing and results for get_size were quite random, now they are all the same and consistent, and confirmed correct. 5. In unmounted devices, the match sent to @lsblk to get extended device data would never work with dm-xx type names, failed to translate them to their mapped name, which is what is used in lsblk matches, this is corrected. This could lead to failures to match fs of members of luks, raid, etc, particularly noticeable with complex logical device structures. This means the fallback filters against internal logic volume names, various file system type matches, would always fail. 6. A small host of further bugs found and fixed during the major refactor, but not all of them were noted, they were just fixed, sorry, those will be lost to history unless you compare with diffs the two versions, but that's thousands of lines, but there were more bugs fixed than listed above, just can't remember them all. FIXES: 1. There was some ambiguity about when inxi falls back to showing hardware graphics driver instead of xorg gfx driver when it can't find an xorg driver. That can happen for instance because of wayland, or because of obscure xorg drivers not yet supported. Now the message is very clear, it says the gfx software driver is n/a, and that it's showing the hardware gfx driver. 2. Big redo of cpu microarch, finally handled cases where same stepping/model ID has two micorarches listed, now that is shown clearly to users, like AMD Zen family 17, model 18, which can be either Zen or Zen+, so now it shows that ambiguity, and a comment: note: check, like it shows for ram report when it's not sure. Shows for instance: arch: Zen/Zen+ note: check in such cases, in other words, it tells users that the naming convention basically changed during the same hardware/die cycle. 3. There were some raid component errors in the unmounted tests which is supposed to test the raid components and remove them from the mounted list. Note that inxi now also tests better if something is a raid component, or an lvm component, or various other things, so unmounted will be right more often now, though it's still not perfect since there are still more unhandled logical storage components that will show as unmounted when tney are parts of logical volumes. Bit by bit!! 4. Part of a significant android fine tuning and fix series, for -P, android uses different default names for partitions, so none showed, now a subset of standard android partitions, like /System, /firmware, etc, shows. Android will never work well though because google keeps locking down key file read/search permissions in /sys and /proc. 5. More ARM device detections, that got tuned quite a bit and cleaned up, for instance, it was doing case sensitive checks, but found cases where the value is all upper case, so it was missing it. Now it does case insensitive device type searches. 6. One of the oldest glitches in inxi was the failure to take the size of the raid arrays versus the size totals of the raid array components led to Local Storage results that were uselessly wrong, being based on what is now called 'raw' disk totals, that's the raw physical total of all system disks. Now if raid is detected the old total: used:... is expanded to: total: raw:... usable:....used:, the usable being the actual disk space that can be used to store data. Also in the case of LVM systems, a further item is added, lvm-free: to report the unused but available volume group space, that is, space not currently taken by logical volumes. This can provide a useful overview of your system storage, and is much improved over the previous version, which was technically unable to solve that issue because the internal structures did not support it, now they do. LVM data requires sudo/ root unfortunately, so you will see different disk raw totals depending on if it's root or not if there is LVM RAID running. Sample: inxi -D Drives: Local Storage: total: raw: 340.19 GiB usable: 276.38 GiB lvm-free: 84.61 GiB used: 8.49 GiB (3.1%) lvm-free is non assigned volume group size, that is, size not assigned to a logical volume in the volume group, but available in the volume group. raw: is the total of all detected block devices, usable is how much of that can be used in file systems, that is, raid is > 1 devices, but those devices are not available for storage, only the total of the raid volume is. Note that if you are not using LVM, you will never see lvm-free:. 7. An anonymous user sent a dataset that contained a reasonable alternate syntax for sensors output, that made inxi fail to get the sensors data. That was prepending 'T' to temp items, and 'F' to fan items, which made enough sense though I'd never seen it before, so inxi now supports that alternate sensors temp/fan syntax, so that should expand the systems it supports by default out of the box. 8. Finally was able to resolve a long standing issue of loading File::Find, which is only used in --debug 20-22 debugger, from top of inxi to require load in the debugger. I'd tried to fix this before, but failed, the problem is that redhat /fedora have broken apart Perl core modules, and made some of them into external modules, which made inxi fail to start due to missing use of required module that was not really required. Thanks to mrmazda for pointing this out to me, I'd tried to get this working before but failed, but this time I figured out how to recode some of the uses of File::Find so it would work when loaded without the package debugger, hard to figure it, turned out a specific sub routine call in that specific case required the parentheses that had been left off, very subtle. 9. Subtle issue, unlike most of the other device data processors, the USB data parser did not use the remove duplicates tool, which led in some cases to duplicated company names in the output for USB, which looks silly. 10. Somehow devtmpfs was not being detected in all cases to remove that from partitions report, that was added to the file systen filters to make sure it gets caught. 11. Removed LVM image/meta/data data slices from unmounted report, those are LVM items, but they are internal LVM volumes, not available or usable. I believe there are other data/meta type variants for different LVM features but I have added as many types as I could find.. Also explictly now remove any _member type item, which is always part of some other logical structure, like RAID or LVM, those were not explicitly handled before. 12. Corrected the various terms ZFS can use for spare drives, and due to how those describe slightly different situations than simply spare, changed the spare section header to Available, which is more accureate for ZFS. ENHANCEMENTS: 1. Going along with FIX 2 is updating and adding to intel, elbrus microarch family/ model/stepping IDs (E8C2), so that is fairly up to date now. 2. Added in a very crude and highly unreliable default fallback for intel: /sys/devices/cpu/caps/pmu_name which will show the basic internal name used which can be quite different from what the actual microarch name is, but the hope is that for new intel cpus that come out after these last inxi updates, something may show, instead of nothing. Note these names are often much more generic, like using skylake for many different microarches. 3. More android enhancements, for androids that allow reading of /system/build.prop, which is a very useful informative system info file, more android data will show, like the device name and variant, and a few other specialized items. You can see if your android device lets inxi read build.prop if you see under -S Distro: Android 7.1 (2016-07-23) or just Android. If it shows just android, that means it can't read that file. Showing Android however is also new, since while inxi can't always read build.prop, if that file is there, it's android, so inxi finally can recognize it's in android, even though it can't give much info if it's locked down. Inxi in fact did not previously know it was running in android, which is quite different from ARM systems in some ways, but now it does. If the data is available, it will be used in Distro: and in Machine: data to add more information about the android version and device. 4. A big one, for -p/-P/-o/-j now shows with -x the mapped device name, not just the /dev/dm-xx ID, which makes connecting the various new bits easier, for RAID, Logical reports. Note that /dev/mapper/ is removed from the mapped name since that's redundant and verbose and makes the output harder to read. For mapped devices, the new --logical / -L report lets you drill into the devices to find out what dm-xx is actually based on. 5. More big ones, for -a -p/-P/-o/-j/-R/-L shows kernel device major:minor number, which again lets you trace each device around the system and report. 6. Added mdadm if root for mdraid report, that let me add a few other details for mdraid not previously available. This added item 'state;' to the mdraid report with right -x options. 7. Added vpu component type to ARM gfx device type detection, don't know how video processing vpu had escaped my notice. 8. Added fio[a-z] block device, I'd never heard of that before, but saw use of it in dataset, so learned it's real, but was never handled as a valid block device type before, like sda, hda, vda, nvme, mmcblk, etc. fio works the same, it's fio + [a-z] + [0-9]+ partition number. 9. Expanded to alternate syntax Elbrus cpu L1, L2, L3 reporting. Note that in their nomenclature, L0 and L1 are actually both L1, so add those together when detected. 10. RAM, thanks to a Mint user, antikythera, learned, and handled something new, module 'speed:' vs module 'configured clock speed:'. To quote from supermicro: <<< Question: Under dmidecode, my 'Configured Clock Speed' is lower than my 'Speed'. What does each term mean and why are they not the same? Answer: Under dmidecode, Speed is the expected speed of the memory (what is advertised on the memory spec sheet) and Configured Clock Speed is what the actual speed is now. The cause could be many things but the main possibilities are mismatching memory and using a CPU that doesn't support your expected memory clock speed. Please use only one type of memory and make sure that your CPU supports your memory. >>> 11. Since RAM was gettng a look, also changed cases where ddr ram speed is reported in MHz, now it will show the speeds as: [speed * 2] MT/S ([speed] MHz). This will let users make apples to apples speed comparisons between different systems. Since MT/S is largely standard now, there's no need to translate that to MHz. 12. And, even more!! When RAM speeds are logically absurd, adds in note: check This is from a real user's data by the way, as you can see, it triggers all the new RAM per Device report features. Sample: Memory: RAM: total: 31.38 GiB used: 20.65 GiB (65.8%) Array-1: capacity: N/A slots: 4 note: check EC: N/A Device-1: DIMM_A1 size: 8 GiB speed: 1600 MT/s (800 MHz) Device-2: DIMM_A2 size: 8 GiB speed: spec: 1600 MT/s (800 MHz) actual: 61910 MT/s (30955 MHz) note: check Device-3: DIMM_B1 size: 8 GiB speed: 1600 MT/s (800 MHz) Device-4: DIMM_B2 size: 8 GiB speed: spec: 1600 MT/s (800 MHz) actual: 2 MT/s (1 MHz) note: check 13. More disks vendor!!! More disk vendor IDs!!! Yes, that's right, eternity exists, here, now, and manifests every day!! Thanks to linux-lite hardware database for this eternally generating list. Never underestimate the creativity of mankind to make more disk drive companies, and to release new model IDs for existing companies. Yes, I feel that this is a metaphore for something much larger, but what that is, I'm not entirely clear about. CHANGES: 1. Recent kernel changes have added a lot more sensor data in /sys, although this varies system to system, but now, if your system supports it, you can get at least partial hdd temp reports without needing hddtemp or root. Early results suggest that nvme may have better support than spinning disks, but it really varies. inxi will now look for the /sys based temp first, then fall back to the much slower and root / sudo only hddtemp. You can force hddtemp always with --hddtemp option, which has a corresponding configuration item. 2. The long requested and awaited yet arcane and obscure feature -L/--logical, which tries to give a reasonably good report on LVM, LUKS, VeraCrypt, as well as handling LVM raid, both regular and thin, is now working. This took a lot of testing, and is a very solid and good start in my view, going from nothing to something is always a big improvement!! LVM reports require root/sudo. This will, finally, close issue #135. 3. Going along with -L, and serving as a model for the logic of -L, was the complete refactor of -R, RAID, which was a real mess internally, definitely one of the messiest and hardest to work with features of inxi before the refactor. It's now completely cleaned up and modularized, and is easy to add raid types, which was not possible before, now it cleanly supports zfs, mdraid, and lvm raid, with in depth reports and added items like mdraid size, raid component device sizes and maj:min numbers if the -a option is used. Note that LVM RAID requires root/sudo. 4. Added some more sensors dimm, volts items, slight expansion. Note that the possible expansion of sensors made possible by the recently upgraded sensors output logic, as well as the new inxi internal sensors data structure, which is far more granular than the previous version, and allows for much more fine grained control and output, though only gpu data currently takes advantage of this new power under the covers, although as noted, the /sys based hdd temps use the same source, only straight from /sys, since it was actually easier using the data directly from sys than trying to map the drive locations to specific drives in sensors output. Well, to be accurate, since now only board type sensors are used for the temp/fan speed, voltage, etc, reports, the removal of entire sensor groups means less chance of wrong results. 5. To bring the ancient RAID logic to fit the rest of inxi style, made zfs, mdraid, and lvm raid components use incrementing numbers, like cpu cores does. This got rid of the kind of ugly hacks used previously which were not the same for zfs or mdraid, but now they are all the same, except that the numbers for mdraid are the actual device numbers that mdraid supplies, and the LVM and ZFS numbers are just autoincremented, starting at 1. 6. Changed message to because it's shorter and communicates the same thing. INTERNAL CODE CHANGES: 1. Small, transparent test, tested on Perl 5.032 for Perl 7 compatibility. All tests passed, no legacy code issues in inxi as of now. 2. Although most users won't notice, a big chunk of inxi was refactored internally, which is why the new -L, the revamped -R, and the fixed disk totals finally all can work now. This may hopefully result in more consistent output and fewer oddities and randomnesses, since more of the methods all use the same tools now under the covers. Ths refactor also significantly improved inxi's execution speed, by about 4-5%, but most of those gains are not visible due to the added new features, but the end result is new inxi runs roughly the same speed as pre 3.2.00 inxi, but does more, and does it better, internally at least. If you have a very good eye you may also note a few places where this manifests externally as well. Last I checked about 10-12% of the lines of inxi had been changed, but I think that number is higher now. Everything that could be optimized was, everything could be made more efficient was. 3. Several core tools in inxi were expanded to work much more cleanly, like reader(), which now supports returning just the index value you want, that always happened on the caller end before, which led to extra code. get_size likewise was expanded to do a string return, which let me remove a lot of internal redundant code in creating the size unit output, like 32 MiB. uniq() was also redone to work exclusively by reference. 4. Many bad reference and dereference practices that had slipped into inxi from the start are mostly corrected now, array assignments use push now, rather than assign to array, then add array to another array, and assign those to the master array. Several unnecessary and cpu/ram intensive copying steps, that is, were removed in many locations internally in inxi. Also now inxi uses more direct anonymous array and hash refernce assignments, which again removes redundant array/hash creation, copy, and assignment. 5. Also added explicit -> dereferencing arrows to make the code more clear and readable, and to make it easier for perl to know what is happening. The lack of consistency actually created confusion, I was not aware of what certain code was doing, and didn't realize it was doing the same thing as other code because of using different methods and syntaxes for referencing array/hash components. I probably missed some, but I got many of them, most probably. 6. Instituted a new perl builtin sub routine rule which is: if the sub takes 2 or more arguments, always put in parentheses, it makes the code much easier to follow because you see the closing ), like: push(@rows,@row); Most perl builtins that take only one arg do not use parentheses, except length, which just looks weird when used in math tests, that is: length($var) > 13 looks better than length $var > 13. This resolved inconsistent uses that had grown over time, so now all the main builtins follow these rules consistently internally. Due to certain style elements, and the time required to carefully go through all these rules, grep and map do not yet consistently use these rules, that's because the tendency has been to use the grep {..test..} @array and map {...actions...} @array 7. Mainly to deal with android failures to read standard system files due to google locking it down, moved most file queries to use -r, is readable, rather than -e, exists, or -f, is file, unless it only needs to know if it exists, of course. This fixed many null data errors in android even on locked androids. 8. Added in %mapper and %dmmapper hashes to allow for easy mapping and unmapping of mapped block devices. Got rid of other ways of doing that, and made it consistent throughout inxi. These are globals that load once. 9. Learned that perl builtin split() has a very strange and in my view originally terrible decision that involves treating as regex rules string characters in split string, like split('^^',$string), which should logically be a string value, not a ^ start search followed by a ^, but that's how it is, so that was carefully checked and made consistent as well. Also expanded split to take advantage of the number of splits to do, which I had only used occasionally before, but only updated field/value splits where I have a good idea of what the data is. This is very useful when the data is in the form of field: value, but value can contain : as well. You have to be very careful however, since some data we do want in fact the 2nd split, but not the subsequent ones, so I only updated the ones I was very sure about. 10. Going along with the cpu microarch fixes, updated and cleaned up all the lists of model/stepping matches, now they are all in order and much easier to scan and find, that had gotten sloppy over the years. 11. More ARM, moved dummy and codec device values into their own storage arrays, that let me remove the filters against those in the other detections. Makes logic easier to read and maintain as well. ----------------------------------- -- Harald Hope - Tue, 15 Dec 2020 15:08:05 -0800 ===================================================================================== Version: 3.1.09 Patch: 00 Date: 2020-11-11 ----------------------------------- Changes: ----------------------------------- Bug fixes, new features!! Update now!! Or don't, it's up to you. Bugs: 1. Let's call some of the android fixes and debugger failures bugs, why not? Those are fixed. Note that many of these fixes will impact any system that is ARM based, not just android. Fixes: 1. Related to issue #226 which was a fine issue, fine tuned the debugger debuggers to allow for smoother handling of /sys parse failures. Also added debugger filters for common items that would make the /sys parser hang, oddly, most seem to be in /sys/power for android devices. 2. Added some fine-tunings for possible mmcblk storage paths, in some cases, an extra /block is added, which made inxi think mounted drives were unmounted. I've never seen this extra /block except on mmcblk devices on android, but you never know, it could be more widespread. 3. Also mainly related to android, but maybe other ARM devices, in some cases, an errant 'timer' device was appearing as a cpu variant, which is wrong. That was a corner case for sure, and part of the variant logic in fact uses timer values to assign the actual cpu variants, but it was wrong in this case because it was ....-timer-mem, not ...-timer, which led to non-existent CPU variants showing. 4. Issue #236 by ChrisCheney pointed out that inxi had never updated its default /proc/meminfo value to use the newer MemAvailable as default if present, which led to incorrect memory used values showing up. That's because back in the old days, we had to construct a synthetic Memory used from MemFree, buffers, cache, etc, but that wasn't always right, since sometimes the cache actually isn't available, often is, but not always. https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/34e431b0ae398fc54ea69ff85ec700722c9da773 This commit on the kernel explains it pretty clearly. Thanks Chris for bringing this to our attention. 5. Kind of more future-proofing, got rid of a bunch of hard-coded strings internally and switched those to use the row_defaults values, which is where string messages are supposed to go. That was mostly in the initial program check messages on start-up, but also a few other stray ones. Also consolidated them a bit to get rid of redundant messages, and added more variable based messages, like for missing/permissions on programs etc. The idea in general is that all the strings are contained in subs so that in theory they could be swapped for other strings, eg, languages, but honestly, I no longer see this as very likely to ever happen. But it's still nice to be consistent internally and not get sloppy with english strings. This also got rid of some largely redundant items in row_defaults, and expanded the list of handled events, and of variable based events, so it shouldn't be as necessary to add new row_defaults items for similar events. Enhancements: 1. Debugger item to maybe try to find distro OEM, this was connected with issue #231 but the issue poster vanished, and didn't do the work required, so this one won't happen until someone who cares [not me, that is] does the required work. It's always funny to see how quickly people vanish when they have to do the actual boring research that they want me to do for them, lol. Or maybe, sigh is more appropriate than lol. But it is pretty much par for the course, sad to say. Or maybe this was an OEM hoping to have someone do their corporate work for them for free, who knows. Anyway, there's a certain category of items that I'm reasonably happy to implement, but NOT if I have to do all the boring research work, so such features being added will depend on the poster actually doing the boring work. I've gotten burned on this a few times, cpu arch: for example, some guy said he'd track that and provide updates, he never even made it to the first release, so I got stuck doing that one forever after. But that one at least has some general value, so that's ok more or less, but I definitely won't take on stuff that I really don't personally care at all about unless the person requesting the feature does all the work beforehand. The boring part, that is.... 2. Related to issue #226, much improved android ID and many small android fixes for machine data etc. Now uses /system/build.prop for some data, which is a nice source, sadly, most modern android devices seem to be locked down, with both build.prop and /sys locked down, which makes inxi unable to actually get any of that data, but if your device either does not have these root only readable, or if you have an android rooted phone, the android support will be more informative. Hint: if you run inxi in termux on your non rooted android device, and it shows you what android version you are using in System:... Distro: line, then your android is not locked down. I have one such phone, android 7.1, but I cannot say how usual or non usual this is. The poster of issue #226 for instance had to root his android 7 phone to get this data to display. So it seems to vary quite a bit. Note that due to these file system lockdowns, in general, trying to do android arm support remains largely a waste of time, but on some devices sometimes, you can now get quite nice system info. As I noted in the issue, if I can't get the features to work on a non rooted phone in my possession, I'm probably not going to try to do the work because it's too hard to try to work on android issues without having the device in front of you for testing and debugging. In this case, one of my phones did work, so I did the work just to see where android is at now. Android showed some slightly odd syntaxes for some devices, but those are now handled where I got a dataset for them that revealed the changes required. 3. Also related to issue #226 for termux in android, will show -r info. That's an apt based package manager, but termux puts the apt files somewhere else so needed to change paths if those alternate paths existed for apt. 4. Added PARTFLAGS to debugger to see what knd of data that will yield, that's a lsblk key/value pair. 5. Just because it's easy to do, added new -Ixxx item, wakeups: which is a subset of Uptime, this will show how many times the system has been woken from suspend since the last boot. If the system has never been suspended, shows 0. 6. Many more disk vendors and disk IDs. The list just never ends, possibly a metaphor for something, the endless spinning of maya, who knows? 7. Added newest known ubuntu release, hirsute, to buntu ID logic. Might as well catch them early, that will be 21.04. ----------------------------------- -- Harald Hope - Wed, 11 Nov 2020 14:57:38 -0800 ===================================================================================== Version: 3.1.08 Patch: 00 Date: 2020-10-16 ----------------------------------- Changes: ----------------------------------- Bug fixes, updates!!! Yes!! Why wait!!! Can't stay frozen forever! Bugs: 1. Not an inxi bug, but a weird change in defaults for ubuntu GNOME ENV variable values when running at least the gnome desktop, result to end users appears to be a bug. This resolves issue #228 Note that so much weird non desktop data was put into those environmental variables that inxi simply could make no sense of it. The fix was to make the detections more robust, using regex instead of string compare, as well as to at least try to strip out such corrupted data values, though that can never be fully predictable. As far as I know, this issue only hits ubuntu gnome desktops, I've never seen these value corruptions on any other distro, or on any other ubuntu desktop, though they may be there, but I'm not going to test all the ubuntu spins to find out. I'm hoping the combination of logic fixes and junk data cleaning will handle most future instances of these types of corruptions automatically. Again, this only happens on relatively laste ubuntu gnomes as far as I know. Fixes: 1. An oversight, added sshd to list of whitelisted start clients. This permits expected output for: ssh inxi -bay that is, running inxi as an ssh command string. Should have done that a while ago, but better late than never. This corrects issue #227, or at least, has a better default, it worked fine before, but required using --tty to reset to default terminal behavior. The problem is that if inxi can't determine what it's running in, it defaults to thinking it's in an IRC client, and switches to IRC color codes, among other changes. But it was nice to get sshd covered automatically so users don't have to know the --tty option. Changes: 1. More disk vendors and vendor IDs!!! Yes, that's right, the list never ends!! ----------------------------------- -- Harald Hope - Fri, 16 Oct 2020 13:43:40 -0700 ===================================================================================== Version: 3.1.07 Patch: 00 Date: 2020-09-29 ----------------------------------- Changes: ----------------------------------- Bug fixes, feature updates, changes!! Bugs: 1. There was a glitch in the pattern that made -D samsung / seagate not ID right, fixed. 2. I do not like calling this a bug, because it's not an inxi bug, it's an upstream regression in the syntax used in /proc/version, they changed a fully predictable gcc version .... to a random series of embedded/nested parentheses and other random junk. inxi tries to deal with this regression, which will be perceived as a bug in systems running kernel 5.8 or newer and inxi 3.1.06 or older, since it will fail to show the kernel build compiler version since it can't find it in the string. I really dislike these types of regressions caused by bad ideas done badly and without any thought to the transmitted knowledge base, but that's how it goes, no discipline, I miss the graybeards, who cared about things like this. Fixes: 1. more -D nvme id changes, intel in this case. 2. FreeBSD lsusb changed syntax, which triggered a series of errors when run. [hint bsd users, do NOT file issues that you want fixed and then not provide all the data required in a prompt and timely manner, otherwise, really, why did you file the issue?]. Note: the fix basically just rejects any row from lsusb that does not have the expected syntax/value in the expected place, which was I think the right solution given that the change was random, broke expected syntax for lsusb, and wasn't really integrateable into existing inxi usb logic, so why fight it? Given that at least 99.99% of all lsusb output in the world, including by the way OpenBSD's [not sure about most recent version], shows the expected values in the expected place, I could see no value in creating a convoluted work-around for a non core bsd tool in the first place, so that's what I didn't do. See the README.txt for what to do to get issues really handed in BSDs. Changes: 1. -C 'boost' option changed from -xxx feature to -x feature. Consider it a promotion! 2. Added --dbg 19 switch to enable smart data debugging for -Da. 3. Some new tools to handle impossible data values for some -D situations for SMART where the smart report contains gibberish values, that was issue #225 -- tools were convert_hex and is_Hex. The utility for these is limited, but might be of use in some cases, like handling the above gibberish data value. ----------------------------------- -- Harald Hope - Tue, 29 Sep 2020 16:08:05 -0700 ===================================================================================== Version: 3.1.06 Patch: 00 Date: 2020-08-16 ----------------------------------- Changes: ----------------------------------- New features, new changes, new bug fixes!!! Excitement!!! Thrills!!! Bugs: 1. Forgot to set get Shell logic in inxi short form, oops, so Shell remained blank, only inxi short, which I rarely use so I didn't notice. 2. Failed to test pacman-g2 for packages, had wrong query argument, so it failed. Also failed to test for null data, so showed errors for packages as well. Both fixed. 3. A big bug, subtle, and also at the same time, an enhancement, it turns out NVME drives do NOT follow the age old /proc/partitions logic where if the minor number is divisible by 16 or has remainder 8 when divided by 16, it's a primary drive, not a partition. nvme drives use a random numbering when > 1 nvme drives are present, and the old tests would fail for all nvme drivers more than the first one, which led to wrong disk size totals. Thanks gardotd426 who took the time to help figure this out in issue #223 - fix is to not do that test for nvme drives, or rather, to add a last fail test for nvme primary nvme[0-9]n[0-9] drive detections, not the minor number. Fixes: 1. Corrected indentation for block sizes, children were not indented. 2. Updated some older inxi-perl/docs pages, why not, once in a while? 3. Kernel 5.8 introduces a changed syntax to gcc string location, this has been corrected, and the kernel gcc version now shows correctly for the previous syntax and the new one. Hopefully they do not change it again, sigh... 4. Removed string 'hwmon' sensors from gpu, those are not gpu sensors, and are also usually not board/cpu sensors, but things like ath10, iwl, etc, network, or disk sensors, etc. In some cases hwmon sensor data would appear Enhancements: 1. Big sensors refactor, now inxi supports two new sensors options: --sensors-exclude - which allows you to exclude any primary sensor type[s]. Note that in the refactored logic, and in the old logic, gpu sensors were already excluded. Now other hardware specific sensors like network are excluded as well. --sensors-use - use ONLY list of supplied sensor IDs, which have to match the syntax you see in lm-sensors sensors output. Both accept comma separated list of sensors, 1 or more, no spaces. The refactor however is more far reaching, now inxi stores and structures data not as a long line of sensors and data without differentiation, but by sensor array/chip ID, which is how the exclude and use features can work, and how granular default hardware sensor exclusions and uses can happen. This is now working in the gpu sensors, and will in the future be extended to the newer 5.7/5.8 kernel disk temperature sensors values, which will lead in some cases to being able to get sensors data for disks without root or hddtemp. This is a complicated bit of logic, and I don't have time to do it right now, but the data is now there and stored and possible to use in the future. To see sensors structures, use: inxi -s --dbg 18 and that will show the sensors data and its structures, which makes debugger a lot easier for new features. This issue was originally generated by what was in my view an invalid complaint about some inxi sensors defaults, which led me to look more closely at sensors logic, which is severely lacking. More work on sensors will happen in the future, time, health, and energy permitting. 2. Added Watts, mem temp, for amdgpu sensors, as -sxxx option. More gpu sensor data will be added as new data samples show what will be available for the free modules like amdgpu, nouvean, and the intel graphics modules. 3. More disk vendors and IDs, as noted, the list never ends, and it hasn't ended, so statement remains true. Thanks linux-lite hardware database. Changes: 1. This has always bugged me since it was introduced, the primary cpu line starter Topology: which was only technically accurate for its direct value, not its children, and also, in -b, cpu short form was using the value as the key, which is a no-no, I'd been meaning to fix that too, but finally realized if I just make the primary CPU line key be 'Info:', which is short, yet non-ambiguous, it would solve both problems. To keep the -b cpu line as short as before, I removed the 'type:' and integraged that value into the primary Info: string: CPU: Info: 6-Core AMD Ryzen 5 2600 [MT MCP] speed: 2750 MHz min/max: 1550/3400 MHz -b 3.1.05 and earlier: CPU: 6-Core: AMD Ryzen 5 2600 type: MT MCP speed: 1515 MHz min/max: 1550/3400 MHz These resolve something that has irked me for quite a while, 'Topology:' didn't fit, it was too geeky, and worst, it only applied to the value directly following it, NOT to the rest of the CPU information. It also could not be shortened or abbreviated since then it would have made no actual sense, like topo:, and the same issue with value being used for key in -b, and wrong word for line starter in -C would have existed. Besides, someone might think I was trying to make a subtle reference to the great Jodorowsky film 'El Topo', which would be silly, because that's art, and this is just some system specs that are reasonably readable... 2. Was using opendns for WAN dig IP address, but apparently cysco bought that company, and now I've noticed the old opendns dig queries were failing more and more, so replaced that with akamai dig requests. Also made the WAN IP fallback to HTTP IP method if dig failed. New option: --no-http-wan and config item NO_HTTP_WAN with override --http-wan added to let you switch off http wan IP requests if you want. Note that if dig fails, you will get no wan ip address. Updated/improved error messages to handle this more complex set of wan ip options, so hopefully the error alert message will in most cases be right. 3. To future proof inxi, switched debugger upload location to ftp.smxi.org/incoming from the old techpatterns.com/incoming. Updated man/help to remove those urls too. ----------------------------------- -- Harald Hope - Sun, 16 Aug 2020 14:28:58 -0700 ===================================================================================== Version: 3.1.05 Patch: 00 Date: 2020-07-26 ----------------------------------- Changes: ----------------------------------- Bug fixes!!! New Features!! Why wait!!! Bugs: 1. Issue #220 on github: inxi misidentified XFCE as Gnome. This was a kind of core issue, and pointed to some logic that needed updating, and some inadequate assumptions made, and some too loose cascade of tests. Hopefully now xfce will almost never get misidentified, and the other primary desktops ID'ed either from $ENV or from xrop -root will be slightly more accurately identified as well. Note that this fix creates a possibility for obscure misconfigured desktops to be ID'ed wrong, but in this case, that will be technically a bug for them, but with the new fixes, that situation will be cleaner to handle internally in the desktop ID logic. Also tightened the final Gnome fallback detection to not trigger a possible false positive, it was testing for ^_GNOME but that is not adequate, because some gnome programs will trigger these values in xprop -root even if GNOME is not running. Should be safer now, hopefully no new bugs will be triggered by these changes. Fixes: 1. Missed an indentation level for -y1, gcc alt should have been indented in one more level, now it is. 2. In disk vendors/family, didn't clean items starting with '/', this is now corrected. Yes, some do, don't ask me why. Might be cases like: Crucial/Micron maybe, where the first ID is grabbed, not sure. Enhancements: 1. New Disk vendors, vendor IDs!!! The list never ends!!! We've finally found infinity, and it is the unceasing wave of tiny and not so tiny disks and their Ids. 2. New feature: for -Aa, -Na/-na/-ia, -Ga, now will add the modules the kernel could support if they were available on the Device-x lines of those items. This was made an -a option because it really makes no sense, if it's a regular option, users might think that for example an nvidia card had a nouveua driver when it didn't, when in fact, all the kernel is saying is that it knows those listed modules 'couid' be used or present. This corresponds to the Display: item in -Ga, that lists 'alternate:' drivers that Xorg knows about that could likewise be used, if they were on the system. In other words these are --admin options because otherwise users might get confused, so this is one where you want to know the man explanation before you ask for it. It is useful however if you're not sure what your choices are for kernel modules. When the alternate driver is the same as the active driver, or if none is found, it does not show the alternate: item to avoid spamming. ----------------------------------- -- Harald Hope - Sun, 26 Jul 2020 19:10:21 -0700 ===================================================================================== Version: 3.1.04 Patch: 00 Date: 2020-06-28 ----------------------------------- Changes: ----------------------------------- New version, new man, huge update, bug fixes, cleanups, updates!! What started as a relatively minor issue report ended up with a refactor of big chunks of some of the oldest code and logic in inxi. So many bugs and fixes, updates, and enhancements, that I will probably miss some when I try to list them. Bugs: 1. In the process of fixing an issue about sudo use triggering server admin emails on failure, when --sudo/--no-sudo and their respective configuration items were added, sudo was inadvertently disabled because the test ran before the options were processed, which meant the condition to set sudo data was always false, so sudo for internal use was never set. The solution was to set a flag in the option handler and set sudo after options or configs run. 2. Issue #219 reported gentoo and one other repo type would fail to show enabled repos, and would show an error as well, this was due to forgetting to make the match test case insensitive. If only all bugs were this easy to fix!! 3. I'd seen this bug before, and couldn't figure out why it existed. It turned out that the partition blacklist filters were running fine in the main partition data tool, but I had forgotten to add in corresponding lsblk partition data filters, lol, so when the logic went back and double checked for missing partitions. This feature had been, if i remember right, to be able to show hidden partitions, which the standard method didn't see, but lsblk did, anyway, when the double check and add missing partitions logic ran, inxi was putting back in the blacklisted partitions every time, despite the original blacklists working well and as intended. This was fixed by adding in all the required fs type blacklists, then adding in comments above each black list reminding coders that if they add or remove from one blacklist, they have to do the same on the other. 4. Found while testing something unrelated on older vm, the fallback case for cpu bugs, which was supposed to show the basic /proc/cpuinfo cpu bugs, was failing inexplicably because the data was simply being put into the wrong variable name, sigh. Fixes: 1. While not technically an inxi bug, it would certainly appear that way to anyone who triggered it. We'd gotten issue reports before on this, but they were never complete, so couldn't figure it out. Basically, if someone puts inxi into a simple script that is in $PATH [this was the missing fact needed to actually trigger this bug in order to fix it], the script [not inxi], will then enter into an endless loop as inxi queries it for its version number using