mirror of
https://github.com/smxi/inxi.git
synced 2024-11-16 08:11:39 +00:00
armbsdcli-utilitieslinuxperlperl5remote-admin-toolsupport-toolssysadmin-toolsysinfosystem-administration
5234e3903d
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 6 and 7, 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 hey 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 sensitive 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 varous 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, though that is a limited feature which only
supports drilling to a depth of 2 components/devices, there can be more,
particularly for bcache, luks setups, but it's just too hard to code that
level of depth, so something is better than nothing in this case, which
is the actual choice I was faced, the perfect in this case really is/was
the enemy of the good, as they say.
5. More big ones, for -a -p/-P/-o/-j 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 vcu 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, more or less.
This took a lot of testing and will probably not be reasonably complete for
a while, mainly because the levels of abstraction possible between lvm,
lvm raid, mdraid, LUKS, bcache, and other caching and other encryption
options are just too deep to allow for easy handling, or easy outputs.
But 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 <root/superuser required> to <superuser required> 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.
|
||
|---|---|---|
| inxi | ||
| inxi.1 | ||
| inxi.changelog | ||
| LICENSE.txt | ||
| README.txt | ||
README for inxi - a command line system information tool The new faster, more powerful Perl inxi is here! File all issue reports with the master branch. All support for versions prior to 3.0 is now ended, sorry. Make sure to update to the current inxi from the master branch before filing any issue reports. The code in pre 2.9 versions literally no longer exists in inxi 3. Bugs from earlier versions cannot usually be solved in the new version since the pre 2.9 and the 2.9 and later versions are completely different internally. =============================================================================== DEVELOPMENT AND ISSUES ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Make inxi better! Expand supported hardware and OS data, fix broken items! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- HELP PROJECT DEVELOPMENT! SUBMIT A DEBUGGER DATASET ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is easy to do, and only takes a few seconds. These datasets really help the project add and debug features. You will generally also be asked to provide this data for non trivial issue reports. Note that the following options are present: 1. Generate local gz'ed debugger dataset. Leaves gz on your system: inxi version 3: inxi --debug 20 inxi version <= 2.3: inxi -@14 2. Generate, upload gz'ed debugger dataset. Leaves gz on your system: inxi version 3: inxi --debug 21 inxi version <= 2.3: inxi -xx@14 3. Generate, upload, delete gz'ed debugger dataset: inxi version 3 only: inxi --debug 22 You can run these as regular user, or root/sudo, which will gather a bit more data, like from dmidecode, and other tools that need superuser permissions to run. ARM (plus MIPS, SPARC, PowerPC) and BSD datasets are particularly appreciated because we simply do not have enough of those. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- FILE AN ISSUE IF YOU FIND SOMETHING MISSING, BROKEN, OR FOR AN ENHANCEMENT ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- inxi strives to support the widest range of operating systems and hardware, from the most simple consumer desktops, to the most advanced professional hardware and servers. The issues you post help maintain or expand that support, and are always appreciated since user data and feedback is what keeps inxi working and supporting the latest (or not so latest) hardware and operating systems. See INXI VERSION/SUPPORT/ISSUES/BUGS INFORMATION for more about issues/support. See BSD/UNIX below for qualifications re BSDs, and OSX in particular. =============================================================================== SOURCE VERSION CONTROL ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- https://github.com/smxi/inxi MAIN BRANCH: master DEVELOPMENT BRANCHES: inxi-perl, one, two inxi-perl is the dev branch, the others are rarely if ever used. inxi itself has the built in feature to be able to update itself from anywhere, including these branches, which is very useful for development and debugging on various user systems. PULL REQUESTS: Please talk to me before starting to work on patches of any reasonable complexity. inxi is hard to work on, and you have to understand how it works before submitting patches, unless it's a trivial bug fix. Please: NEVER even think about looking at or using previous inxi commits, previous to the current master version, as a base for a patch. If you do, your patch / pull request will probably be rejected. Developers, get your version from the inxi-perl branch, pinxi, otherwise you may not be current to actual development versions. inxi-perl pinxi is always equal to or ahead of master branch inxi. Man page updates, doc page updates, etc, of course, are easy and will probably be accepted, as long as they are properly formatted and logically coherent. When under active development, inxi releases early, and releases often. PACKAGERS: inxi has one and only one 'release', and that is the current commit/version in the master branch (plus pinxi inxi-perl branch, of course, but those should never be packaged). ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- MASTER BRANCH ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is the only supported branch, and the current latest commit/version is the only supported 'release'. There are no 'releases' of inxi beyond the current commit/version in master. All past versions are not supported. git clone https://github.com/smxi/inxi --branch master --single-branch OR direct fast and easy install: wget -O inxi https://github.com/smxi/inxi/raw/master/inxi OR easy to remember shortcut (which redirects to github): wget -O inxi https://smxi.org/inxi wget -O inxi smxi.org/inxi NOTE: Just because github calls tagged commits 'Releases' does not mean they are releases! I can't change the words on the tag page. They are tagged commmits, period. A tag is a pointer to a commit, and has no further meaning. If your distribution has blocked -U self updater and you want a newer version: Open /etc/inxi.conf and change false to true: B_ALLOW_UPDATE=true ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DEVELOPMENT BRANCH ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- All active development is now done on the inxi-perl branch (pinxi): git clone https://github.com/smxi/inxi --branch inxi-perl --single-branch OR direct fast and easy install: wget -O pinxi https://github.com/smxi/inxi/raw/inxi-perl/pinxi OR easy to remember shortcut (which redirects to github): wget -O pinxi https://smxi.org/pinxi wget -O pinxi smxi.org/pinxi Once new features have been debugged, tested, and are reasonably stable, pinxi is copied to inxi in the master branch. It's a good idea to check with pinxi if you want to make sure your issue has not been corrected, since pinxi is always equal to or ahead of inxi. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- LEGACY BRANCH ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you'd like to look at or check out the Gawk/Bash version of inxi, you can find it here, at the inxi-legacy branch (binxi): git clone https://github.com/smxi/inxi --branch inxi-legacy --single-branch OR direct fast and easy install: wget -O binxi https://github.com/smxi/inxi/raw/inxi-legacy/binxi OR easy to remember shortcut (which redirects to github): wget -O binxi https://smxi.org/binxi This version will not be maintained, and it's unlikely that any time will be spent on it in the future, but it is there in case it's of use or interest to anyone. =============================================================================== SUPPORT INFO ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Do not ask for basic help that reading the inxi -h / --help menus, or man page would show you, and do not ask for features to be added that inxi already has. Also do not ask for support if your distro won't update its inxi version, some are bad about that. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DOCUMENTATION ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- https://smxi.org/docs/inxi.htm (smxi.org/docs/ is easier to remember, and is one click away from inxi.htm). The one page wiki on github is only a pointer to the real resources. https://github.com/smxi/inxi/tree/inxi-perl/docs Contains specific Perl inxi documentation, of interest mostly to developers. Includes internal inxi tools, values, configuration items. Also has useful information about Perl version support, including the list of Core modules that _should_ be included in a distribution's core modules, but which are unfortunately sometimes removed. INXI CONFIGURATION: https://smxi.org/docs/inxi-configuration.htm HTML MAN PAGE: https://smxi.org/docs/inxi-man.htm INXI OPTIONS PAGE: http://smxi.org/docs/inxi-options.htm NOTE: Check the inxi version number on each doc page to see which version will support the options listed. The man and options page also link to a legacy version, pre 2.9. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- IRC ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You can go to: irc.oftc.net channel #smxi but be prepared to wait around for a while to get a response. Generally it's better to use github issues. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ISSUES ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- https://github.com/smxi/inxi/issues No issues accepted for non current inxi versions. See below for more on that. Unfortunately as of 2.9, no support or issues can be accepted for older inxi's because inxi 2.9 (Perl) and newer is a full rewrite, and legacy inxi is not being supported since our time here on earth is finite (plus of course, one reason for the rewrite was to never have to work with Gawk->Bash again!). Sys Admin type inxi users always get the first level of support. ie, convince us you run real systems and networks, and your issue shoots to the top of the line. As do any real bugs. Failure to supply requested debugger data will lead To a distinct lack of interest on our part to help you with a bug. ie, saying, oh, it doesn't work, doesn't cut it, unless it's obvious why. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SUPPORT FORUMS ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- https://techpatterns.com/forums/forum-33.html This is the best place to place support issues that may be complicated. If you are developer, use: DEVELOPER FORUMS: https://techpatterns.com/forums/forum-32.html =============================================================================== ABOUT INXI ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- inxi is a command line system information tool. It was forked from the ancient and mindbendingly perverse yet ingenius infobash, by locsmif. That was a buggy, impossible to update or maintain piece of software, so the fork fixed those core issues, and made it flexible enough to expand the utility of the original ideas. Locmsif has given his thumbs up to inxi, so don't be fooled by legacy infobash stuff you may see out there. inxi is lower case, except when I create a text header here in a file like this, but it's always lower case. Sometimes to follow convention I will use upper case inxi to start a sentence, but i find it a bad idea since invariably, someone will repeat that and type it in as the command name, then someone will copy that, and complain that the command: Inxi doesn't exist... The primary purpose of inxi is for support, and sys admin use. inxi is used widely for forum and IRC support, which is I believe it's most common function. If you are piping output to paste or post (or writing to file), inxi now automatically turns off color codes, so the old suggestion to use -c 0 to turn off colors is no longer required. inxi strives to be as accurate as possible, but some things, like memory/ram data, depend on radically unreliable system self reporting based on OEM filling out data correctly, which doesn't often happen, so in those cases, you want to confirm things like ram capacity with a reputable hardware source, like crucial.com, which has the best ram hardware tool I know of. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- COMMITMENT TO LONG TERM STABILITY ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The core mission of inxi is to always work on all systems all the time. Well, all systems with the core tools inxi requires to operate installed. Ie, not Android, yet. What this means is this: you can have a 10 year old box, or probably 15, not sure, and you can install today's inxi on it, and it will run. It won't run fast, but it will run. I test inxi on a 200 MHz laptop from about 1998 to keep it honest. That's also what was used to optimize the code at some points, since differences appear as seconds, not 10ths or 100ths of seconds on old systems like that. inxi is being written, and tested, on Perl as old as 5.08, and will work on any system that runs Perl 5.08 or later. Pre 2.9.0 Gawk/Bash inxi will also run on any system no matter how old, within reason, so there should be no difference. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- FEATURES AND FUNCTIONALITY ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- inxi's functionality continues to grow over time, but it's also important to understand that each core new feature usually requires about 30 days work to get it stable. So new features are not trivial things, nor is it acceptable to submit a patch that works only on your personal system. One inxi feature (-s, sensors data), took about 2 hours to get working in the alpha test on the local dev system, but then to handle the massive chaos that is actual user sensors output and system variations, it took several rewrites and about 30 days to get somewhat reliable for about 98% or so of inxi users. So if your patch is rejected, it's likely because you have not thought it through adequately, have not done adequate testing cross system and platform, etc. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SUPPORTED VERSIONS / DISTRO VERSIONS ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Important: the only version of inxi that is supported is the latest current master branch version/commit. No issue reports or bug reports will be accepted for anything other than current master branch. No merges, attempts to patch old code from old versions, will be considered or accepted. If you are not updated to the latest inxi, do not file a bug report since it's probably been fixed ages ago. If your distro isn't packaging a current inxi, then file a bug report with your packager, not here. inxi is 'rolling release' software, just like Debian Sid, Gentoo, or Arch Linux are rolling release GNU/Linux distributions, with no 'release points'. Distributions should never feel any advantage comes from using old inxi versions because inxi has as a core promise to you, the end user, that it will never require new tools to run. New tools may be required for a new feature, but that will always be handled internally by inxi, and will not cause any operational failures. This is a promise, and I will never as long as I run this project violate that core inxi requirement. Old inxi is NOT more stable than current inxi, it's just old, and lacking in bug fixes and features. For pre 2.9 versions, it's also significantly slower, and with fewer features. Your distro not updating inxi ever, then failing to show something that is fixed in current inxi is not a bug, and please do not post it here. File the issue with your distro, not here. Updating inxi in a package pool will NEVER make anything break or fail, period. It has no version based dependencies, just software, like Perl 5.xx, lspci, etc. There is never a valid reason to not update inxi in a package pool of any distro in the world (with one single known exception, the Slackware based Puppy Linux release, which ships without the full Perl language. The Debian based one works fine). ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SEMANTIC VERSION NUMBERING ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- inxi uses 'semantic' version numbering, where the version numbers actually mean something. The version number follows these guidelines: Using example 3.2.28-6 The first digit(s), "3", is a major version, and almost never changes. Only a huge milestone, or if inxi reaches 3.9.xx, when it will simply move up to 4.0.0 just to keep it clean, would cause a change. The second digit(s), "2", means a new real feature has been added. Not a tweaked existing feature, an actual new feature, which usually also has a new argument option letter attached. The second number goes from 0 to 9, and then rolls over the first after 9. It could also be adding a very complicated expansion of existing features, like Wayland. It depends. The third, "28", is for everything small, can cover bug fixes, tweaks to existing features to add support for something, pretty much anything where you want the end user to know that they are not up to date. The third goes from 0 to 99, then rolls over the second. The fourth, "6", is extra information about certain types of inxi updates. I don't usually use this last one in master branch, but you will see it in branches one,two, inxi-perl, inxi-legacy since that is used to confirm remote test system patch version updates. The fourth number, when used, will be alpha-numeric, a common version would be, in say, branch one: 2.2.28-b1-02, in other words: branch 1 patch version 2. In the past, now and then the 4th, or 'patch', number, was used in trunk/master branches of inxi, but I've pretty much stopped doing that because it's confusing. inxi does not use the fiction of date based versioning because that imparts no useful information to the end user, when you look at say, 2.2.28, and you last had 2.2.11, you can know with some certainty that inxi has no major new features, just fine tunings and bug fixes. And if you see one with 2.3.2, you will know that there is a new feature, almost, but not always, linked to one or more new line output items. Sometimes a fine tuning can be quite significant, sometimes it's a one line code fix. A move to a new full version number, like the rewrite of inxi to Perl, would reflect in first version say, 2.9.01, then after a period of testing, where most little glitches are fixed, a move to 3.0.0. These almost never happen. I do not expect for example version 4.0 to ever happen after 3.0 (early 2018), unless so many new features are added that it actually hits 3.9, then it would roll over to 4. =============================================================================== BSD / UNIX ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- BSD support is not as complete as GNU/Linux support due to the fact some of the data simply is not available, or is structured in a way that makes it unique to each BSD. This fragmentation makes supporting BSDs far more difficult than it should be in the 21st century. The BSD support in inxi is an ongoing process, with more features being added as new data sources and types are discovered. Note that due to time/practicality constraints, in general, only the original BSD branches will be actively supported: FreeBSD+derived; OpenBSD+derived; NetBSD+derived. Other UNIX variants will generally only get the work required to make internal BSD flags get set and to remove visible output errors. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TRUE BSDs ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- All BSD issue reports unless trivial and obvious will require 1 of two things: 1. a full --debug 21 data dump so I don't have to spend days trying to get the information I need to resolve the issue file by painful file from the issue poster. This is only the start of the process, and realistically requires 2. to complete it. 2. direct SSH access to at least a comparable live BSD version/system, that is, if the issue is on a laptop, access has to be granted to the laptop, or a similar one. Option 2 is far preferred because in terms of my finite time on this planet of ours, the fact is, if I don't have direct (or SSH) access, I can't get much done, and the little I can get done will take 10 to 1000x longer than it should. That's my time spent (and sadly, with BSDs, largely lost), not yours. I decided I have to adopt this much more strict policy with BSDs after wasting untold hours on trying to get good BSD support, only to see that support break a few years down the road as the data inxi relied in changed structure or syntax, or the tools changed, or whatever else makes the BSDs such a challenge to support. In the end, I realized, the only BSDs that are well supported are ones that I have had direct access to for debugging and testing. I will always accept patches that are well done, if they do not break GNU/Linux, and extend BSD support, or add new BSD features, and follow the internal inxi logic, and aren't too long. inxi sets initial internal flags to identify that it is a BSD system vs a GNU/Linux system, and preloads some data structures for BSD use, so make sure you understand what inxi is doing before you get into it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- APPLE CORPORATION OSX ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Non-free/libre OSX is in my view a BSD in name only. It is the least Unix-like operating system I've ever seen that claims to be a Unix, its tools are mutated, its data randomly and non-standardly organized, and it totally fails to respect the 'spirit' of Unix, even though it might pass some random tests that certify a system as a 'Unix'. If you want me to use my time on OSX features or issues, you have to pay me, because Apple is all about money, not freedom (that's what the 'free' in 'free software' is referring to, not cost), and I'm not donating my finite time in support of non-free operating systems. ### EOF ###