mirror of
https://github.com/smxi/inxi.git
synced 2024-11-16 08:11:39 +00:00
armbsdcli-utilitieslinuxperlperl5remote-admin-toolsupport-toolssysadmin-toolsysinfosystem-administration
75433a383a
raspberry pi!! New Features!!! Enhanced old features!!! Did I
mention bluetooth?! USB? Audio? No? well, all hugely upgraded!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BUGS:
1. Sadly, 3.3.01 went out with a bug, forgot to remove a debugger,
resulted in hardcoded kernel compiler version always showing.
Note that there is a new inxi-perl/docs/inxi-bugs.txt file to
track such bugs, and matched to specific tagged releases so you
know the line number and items to update to fix it.
2. Typo in manjaro system base match resulted in failing to report
system base as expected.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
KNOWN ISSUES BUT CAN'T OR WON'T BE FIXED:
1. OpenBSD made fvwm -version output an error along with the
version, and not in the normal format for standard fvwm, this
is just too complicated to work around for now, though it could
be in theory by creating a dedicated fvwm-oBSD item in
program_values. But that kind of granularity gets too hard to track,
and they are likely to change or fix this in the future anyway.
Best is they just restore default -version output to what it is
elsewhere, not nested in error outputs.
2. Discovered an oddity, don't know how widespread this
is, but Intel SSDs take about 200 milliseconds to get the sys
hwmon based drive temps, when it should take under a
millisecond, this may be a similar cause as those drives having
a noticeable SMART report delay, not sure. This is quite
noticeable since 200 ms is about 15% of the total execution
time on my test system.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
FIXES:
1. For --recommends, added different rpm SUSE xdpyinfo package name.
2. Distro Data: added double term filter for lsb-release due to sometimes
generating repeated names in distro.
3. Packages: fix for appimage package counts.
4. Desktop: fixed ID for some wm when no xprop installed, fallback to
using @ps_cmd detections, which usually work fine.
5a. When swap used was 0, showed N/A, fixed to correctly show 0 KiB.
5b. If no swap devices found, BSDs were not correctly showing
no swap data found message. Corrected.
6a. Bluetooth: Removed hcidump from debugger, in some cases, that will
just hang endlessly. Also wrapped bluetoothctl and bt-adapter debugger
data collection with @ps_cmd bluetooth running test. Only run if
bluetooth service is running.
6b. Bluetooth: running detections have to be very strict, only
bluetoothd, not bluetooth, the latter can show true when bluetoothd
is not running, and did in my tests.
7. USB: with Code Change 1, found a few places where fallback usb type
detections were creating false matches, which resulted in say,
bluetooth devices showing up as network devices due to the presence
of the word 'wireless' in the device description. These matches are
all updated and revised to be more accurate and less error prone.
8. Battery: an oversight, had forgotten to have percent used of
available capacity, which made Battery data hard to decipher, now
it shows the percent of available total, as well as the condition
percent, so it's easier to understand the data now, and hopefully
more clear.
9a. OpenBSD changed usbdevs output format sometime in the latest
releases, which made the delicate matching patterns fail. Updated
to handle both variants. They also changed pcidump -v formatting
at some point, now inxi will try to handle either. Note that
usbdevs updates also work fine on NetBSD.
9b. FreeBSD also changed their pciconf output in beta 13.0, which
also broke the detections completely, now checks for old and new
formats. Sigh. It should not take this much work to parse tools
whose output should be consistent and reliable. Luckily I ran
the beta prior to this release, or all pci device detections
would simply have failed, without fallback.
9c. Dragonfly BSD also changed an output format, in vmstat, that
made the RAM used report fail. Since it's clearly not predictable
which BSD will change support for which vmstat options, now just
running vmstat without options, and then using processing logic
to determine what to do with the results.
10. It turns out NetBSD is using /proc/meminfo, who would have
thought? for memory data, but they use it in a weird way that
could result in either negative or near 0 ram used. Added in
some filters to not allow such values to print, now it tries
to make an educated guess about how much ram the system is
really using based on some tests.
11. Something you'd only notice if testing a lot, uptime failed
when the uptime was < 1 minute, it had failed to handle the seconds
only option, now it does, seconds, minutes, hours:minutes,
days hours:minutes, all work.
12. Missed linsysfs type to exclude in partitons, that was a partner
to linprocfs type, both are BSD types.
13. Added -ww to ps arguments, that stops the cutting width to terminal
size default behavior in BSDs, an easy fix, wish I'd known about
that a long time ago.
15. gpart seems to show sizes in bytes, not the expected KiB, so
that's now handled internally. Hopefully that odd behavior won't
randomly change in the future, sigh.
16. Fixed slim dm detection, saw instance where it's got slim.pid
like normal dms, not the slim.lock which inxi was looking for, so
now inxi looks for both, and we're all happy!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
ENHANCEMENTS:
1. Added in something that should have been there all along, now inxi
validates the man page download as well as the self, this avoids
corrupted downloads breaking the man.
2. Init: added support for shepherd init system.
3. Distro Data: added support for guix distro ID; added support for
NomadBSD, GhostBSD, HardenedBSD system base. GhostBSD also shows the main
package version for the distro version ID, which isn't quite the
same as the version you download, but it's close. Also added os-release
support for BSDs, using similar tests as for linux distros, that
results in nicer outputs for example for Dragonfly BSD.
4. Package Data: added guix/scratch [venom]/kiss/nix package managers.
Update for slackware 15 package manager data directory relocation,
now handles either legacy current or future one.
5. Repos: added scratch/kiss/nix-channels; Added GhostBSD, HardenedBSD
pkg repos.
6. USB Data: added usbconfig. That's FreeBSD's, and related systems.
7. Device Data: Added pcictl support, that's NetBSD's, I thought
inxi had supported that, but then I remembered last time I tried to
run netBSD in a vm, I couldn't get it figured out. Now debugged and
working reasonably well.
8. Raspberry Pi 3, 4: ethernet nic now detected; wifi device,
which is on a special mmcnr type, now works, that stopped working in
pi 3, due to the change, now it's handled cleanly. Also added support
for pi bluetooth, which lives on a special serial bus, not usb.
For Raspberry Pi OS, added system base detections, which are tricky.
Also matched mmcnr devices to IF data, which was trickyy as well.
Note that as far as I could discover, only pi puts wifi on mmcnr.
9. Bluetooth: due to deprecated nature of the fine hciconfig
utility, added in support for bt-adapter, which also allows matching
of bluetooth data to device data, but is very sparse in info
supplied compared to hciconfig. bluetoothctl does not have enough
data to show the hci device, so it's not used, since inxi can't
match the bluetooth data to the device (no hci[x]). This should help
the distros that are moving away from hciconfig, in particular,
AUR is only way arch users can get hciconfig, which isn't ideal.
10. New tool and feature, ServiceData, this does two things,
as cross platform as practical, show status of bluetooth service,
this should help a lot in support people debugging bluetooth problems,
since you have bluetooth enabled but down, or up, disabled, and you
can also have the device itself down or up, so now it shows all that
data together for when it's down, but when the device is up, it just
shows the device status since the other stuff is redundant then.
In -Sa, it now shows the OS service manager that inxi detected
using a bunch of fallback tests, that's useful to admins who
are on a machine they don't know, then you can see the service
manager to use, like rc-service, systemctl, service, sv, etc.
11. Big update for -A: Sound Servers: had always been really
just only ALSA, now it shows all detected sound servers, and whether
they are running or not. Includes: ALSA, OSS, PipeWire, PulseAudio,
sndio, JACK. Note that OSS version is a guess, might be wrong source
for the version info.
12. Added USB device 'power:' item, that's in mA, not a terrible
thing to have listed, -xxx. This new feature was launched cross
platform, which is nice. Whether the BSD detections will break
in the future of course depends on whether they change the output
formats again or not. Also added in USB more chip IDs, which can
be useful. For BSDs, also added in a synthetic USB rev, taken
from the device/hub speeds. Yes, I know, USB 2 can have low speed,
full speed, or high speed, and 1.1 can have low and full speeds,
so you actually can't tell the USB revision version from the speeds,
but it's close enough.
13. Made all USB/Device data the same syntax and order, more
predictable, bus, chip, class IDs all the same now.
14. Added in support for hammer and null/nullfs file system types,
which trigger 'logical:' type device in partitions, that's also
more correct than the source: Err-102 that used to show, which
was really just a flag to alert me visibly that the partition
type detection had simply failed internally. Now for detected
types, like zfs tank/name or null/nullfs, it knows they are
logical structures.
15. Expanded BSD CPU data, where available, now can show L1/L2/
L3 cache, cpu arch, stepping, family/model ids, etc, which is
kind of nifty, although, again, delicate fragile rules that
will probably break in the future, but easier to fix now.
16. By an old request, added full native BSD doas support.
That's a nice little tool, and it plugged in fairly seamlessly
to existing sudo support. Both the internal doas/sudo stuff
should work the same, and the detection of sudo/doas start
should work the same too.
17a. Shell/Parent Data: Big refactor of the shell start/parent logic,
into ShellData which helped resolve some issues with running-in
showing shell name, not vt terminal or program name. Cause of that
is lots of levels of parents before inxi could reach the actual
program that was running inxi. Solution was to change to a longer
loop, and let it iterate 8 times, until it finds something that is
not a shell or sudo/doas/su type parent, this seems to work quite
well, you can only make it fail now if you actually try to do it on
purpose, which is fine.
This was very old logic, and carried some mistakes and
redundancies that made it very hard to understand, that's cleaned
up now. Also restored the old (login) value, which shows
when you use your normal login account on console, some system
will also now show (sudo,login) if the login user sudos inxi,
but that varies system to system.
17b. BSD running-in: Some of the BSDs now support the -f flag
for ps, which made the parent logic for running-in possible for
BSDs, which was nice. Some still don't support it, like OpenBSD
and NetBSD, but that's fine, inxi tests, and if no support detected,
just shows tty number. Adding in more robust support here cleaned
up some redundant logic internally as well.
17c. Updated terminal and shell ID detections, there's quite a few
new terminals this year, and a new shell or two. Those are needed
for more reliable detections of when the parent is NOT a shell,
which is how we find what it is.
18. Added ctwm wm support, that's the new default for NetBSD,
based on twm, has version numbers.
19. Upgraded BSD support for gpart and glabel data, now should
catch more more often.
20. For things like zfs raid, added component size, that doesn't
always work due to how zfs refers to its components, but it often
does, which is better than never before.
21. To make BSD support smoother, got rid of some OpenBSD only
rules, which in fact often apply to NetBSD as well. That may
lead to some glitches, but overall it's better to totally stay
away from OpenBSD only tests, and all BSD variant tests, and
just do dynamic testing that will work when it applies, and
not when it doesn't. In this case, added ftp downloader support
for netBSD by removing the openBSD only flag for that item.
There's a bit of a risk there in a sense since if different ftp
programs with different options were to be the fallback for something
else, it might get used, but that's fine, it's a corner case, better
to have them all work now than to worry about weird future things.
But limiting it to only BSDs should get rid of most of the problem.
vmstat and optical drive still use net/openbsd specifics because
it is too tricky to figure out it out in any more dynamic way.
22. For -Sxxx, added if systemd, display, virtual terminal number.
Could be useful to debug subtle issues, if the user is for example
not running their desktop in vt 7, the default for most systems.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHANGES:
1. Moved battery voltage to -Bx output, the voltage is quite
important to know since that is the key indicator of battery state.
If voltage is within .5 volts of specified minimum, shows voltage
for -B since that's a prefail condition, it's getting close to
death.
2. In partitions and raid, when the device was linear raid logical
type layout, it said, no-raid, when it should be 'linear', that's
now cleaner and more correct.
3. When running-in is a tty value, it will now show the entire
tty ID, minus the '/dev/tty', this will be more precise, and also
may resolve cases where tty was fully alpha, no numbers, previously
inxi filtered out everything that was not a number, but that can
in some tty types remove critical tty data, so now it will show:
running-in:
tty 2 [not changed]; tty pts/2 [adds pts/]; tty E2 [adds the E];
tty rx [would have not shown at ll before]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CODE CHANGES:
NOTE: unlike the previous refactors, a lot of these changes were
done to make inxi more maintainable, which means, slightly less
optimized, which has been my preference in the past, but if the
stuff can't be maintained, it doesn't matter how fast it runs!
These changes have really enhanced the quality of the code and
made it a lot easier to work with. It's also now a lot easier to
add debuggers, force/fake data switches, etc, so it gets done,
unlike before, when it was a pain, so it got skipped, and then
caused bugs because of stray debuggers left in place, and so on.
The bright side is while reading up on this, I learned that using
very large subs is much more efficient than many small ones,
which I've always felt was the case, and it is, so the style
used internally in inxi proves to be the best one for optimizations.
These refactors, ongoing, have now touched at least 1/3, almost
1/2, of the entire inxi codebase, so the stuff is getting more
and more consistent and up to date, but given how old the logic
is in places, there will be more refactors in the future, and
maybe once the code is easier to maintain, some renewed
optimizations!, if we can find anything that makes sense, like
passing array/hash references back to the caller, already the
first half is done, passing references to the sub/method always.
The second part is started, using the Benchmark Perl module,
which really speeds up testing and helps avoid pointless tweaks
that do little re speed improvements.
I could see with some care some areas where working on data
directly via references could really speed things up, but it's
hard to write and read that type of code, but it's already being
done in the recursive data and output logics, and a few other
places.
1. Large refactor of USBData, that was done in part to help make
it work for BSDs better, but also to get it better organized.
This refactor also made all the device items, like -A,-G,-N,-E
use the same methods for creating USB output, previously they
had used a hodgepodge of methods, some super old, it was not
possible to add USB support more extensively for BSDs without
this change.
Also added in some fallback usb type detection tools using
several large online collections of that info to see what possible
matching patterns could catch more devices and correctly match
them to their type, which is the primary way now that usb output
per type is created. This really helps with BSDs, though BSD
usb utilities suffer from less data than lsusb so they don't always
get device name strings in a form where they can be readily ID'ed,
but it's way better than it was before, so that's fine!
Moved all previous methods of detecting if a card/device was USB
into USBData itself so it would all be in one place, and easier
to maintain.
All USB tools now use bus_id_alpha for sorting, and all now
sort as well, that was an oversight, previously the BSD usb
tools were not sorted, but those have been enhanced a lot, so
sorting on alpha synthetic bus ids became possible.
Removed lsusb as a BSD option, it's really unreliable, and the data
is different, and also varies a lot, it didn't really work at all
in Dragonfly, or had strange output, so lsusb is now a linux only
item.
2. Moved various booleans that were global to %force, %loaded, and
some to the already present, but lightly used, %use hashes. It was
getting too hard to add tests etc, which was causing bugs to happen.
Yes, using hashes is slower than hardcoding in the boolean scalars,
but this change was done to improve maintainability, which is starting
to matter more.
3. Moved several sets of subs to new packages, again, to help with
debugging and maintainability. MemoryData, redone in part to
handle the oddities with NetBSD reporting of free, cached, and
buffers, but really just to make it easier to work with overall.
Also moved kernel parameter logic to KernelParameters, gpart logic
to GpartData, glabel logic to GlabelData, ip data IpData, check_tools
to CheckTools, which was also enhanced largely, and simplified,
making it much easier to work with.
4. Wrapped more debugger logic in $fake{data} logic, that makes
it harder to leave a debugger uncommented, now to run it, you have
to trigger it with $fake{item} so the test runs, that way even if
I forget to comment it out, it won't run for regular user.
5. Big update to docs in branch inxi-perl/docs, those are now
much more usable for development. Updated in particular
inxi-values.txt to be primary reference doc for $fake, $dbg,
%force, %use, etc types and values. Also updated inxi-optimization.txt
and inxi-resources.txt to bring them closer to the present.
Created inxi-bugs.txt as well, which will help to know which known
bugs belonged to which frozen pools. These bugs will only refer
to bugs known to exist in tagged releases in frozen pool distros.
6. For sizes, moved most of the sizing to use main::translate_size,
this is more predictable, though as noted, these types of
changes make inxi a bit slower since it moved stuff out of inline
to using quick expensive sub calls, but it's a lot easier to
maintain, and that's getting to be more important to me now.
7. In order to catch live events, added in dmesg to dmesg.boot data
in BSDs, that's the only way I could find to readily detect
usb flash drives that were plugged in after boot. Another hack,
these will all come back to bite me, but that's fine, the base
is easier to work on and debug now, so if I want to spend time
revisiting the next major version BSD releases, it will be easier
to resolve the next sets of failures.
8. A big change, I learned about the non greedy operator for
regex patterns, ?, as in, .*?(next match rule), it will now
go up only to the next match rule. Not knowing this simple
little thing made inxi use some really convoluted regex to
avoid such greedy patterns. Still some gotchas with ?, like
it ignores following rules that are zero or 1, ? type, and
just treats it as zero instances. But that's easy to work with.
9. Not totally done, but now moved more to having set data
tools set their $loaded{item} value in get data, not externally,
that makes it easier to track the stuff. Only where it makes
sense, but there's a lot of those set/get items, they should
probably all become package/classes, with set/get I think.
10. Optimized reader() and grabber() and set_ps_aux_data(), all
switched from using grep/map to using for loops, that means
inxi doesn't have to go through each array 2x anymore, actually
4x in the case of set_ps_aux_data(). This saved a visible
amount of execution time, I noticed this lag when running
pinxi through NYTProf optimizer, there was a quite visible
time difference between grabber/reader and the subshell
time, these optimizations almost removed that difference,
meaning only the subshell now really takes any time to run.
Optimized url_cleaner and data_cleaner in RepoData, those
now just work directy on the array references, no returns.
Ran some more optimization tests, but will probably hold off
on some of them, for example, using cleaner() by reference is
about 50% faster than by copy, but redoing that requires
adding in many copies from read only things like $1, so
the change would lead to slightly less clean code, but may
revisit this in the future, we'll see.
But in theory, basically all the core internal tools that
take a value and modify it should do that by reference
purely since it's way faster, up to 10x.
|
||
|---|---|---|
| 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 ###