hw-probe

hw-probe [options]

hw-probe collects a snapshot of a machine's hardware configuration and the related kernel/userspace logs, then optionally uploads it to the public Linux Hardware Database at linux-hardware.org. The uploaded probe gets a permanent URL that can be shared on bug trackers, mailing lists, or vendor support requests.A probe combines the output of standard tools (lspci, lsusb, lscpu, dmidecode, smartctl, lshw, edid, dmesg, Xorg.log, etc.) into a structured, anonymized bundle. The database aggregates these reports to track hardware compatibility across Linux distributions, identify suitable drivers for unsupported devices, and recommend kernels known to work with a given configuration.The tool also doubles as a self-monitoring agent: with -start it adds a cron job that runs daily, compares the new probe with the previous one and emails the user if a disk SMART error, missing device, or other anomaly appears. It is widely used by distributions, vendors, and end users to diagnose driver issues, plan upgrades, and inventory fleets of machines.

-all

Probe for all hardware. Equivalent to enabling every individual probe collector.

Probe for hardware (a lighter probe than -all).

Collect system logs (dmesg, journal, lspci, lsusb, etc.).

Set log collection verbosity: `mini`, `default`, or `maximal`.

Upload the resulting probe to linux-hardware.org and print the public URL.

Run operability sanity tests on graphics, drive, CPU and memory.

Test integrated and discrete graphics with glxgears.

Test drive read speed with hdparm.

Test CPU using dd and md5sum.

Test RAM with memtester.

Set a custom name or description for the probe.

Tag the probe with an inventory identifier.

Request a new inventory ID, linked to -email.

Email address to associate with a generated inventory ID.

Disable specific log collectors (e.g. `xdpyinfo,xorg.conf`).

Force-enable specific log collectors disabled by default.

Dump the ACPI tables.

Decode dumped ACPI tables (requires acpica-tools).

Show summary of probe data on the console.

Print detailed log output during probing.

Use a custom IDs database file when decoding device IDs.

Re-create probes from a directory of previously-saved probe data.

Install a daily cron job that probes the system and emails on hardware failure.

Remove the daily cron job created by -start.

Enable debug output and keep temporary files.

Print full usage information.

Local probes are written to `/root/HWPROBE/LATEST/` (or `~/HWPROBE/LATEST/` for non-root probes). The cron job created by -start lives in `/etc/cron.daily/hw-probe`. Decoding ACPI requires the acpica-tools package; reading SMART requires smartmontools; graphics checks require mesa-utils for glxgears.

Most probes require root privileges to read SMART data, DMI tables and X session logs — invoke via `sudo -E` so that environment variables (notably `DISPLAY`) are preserved. A full probe with -check can take a minute or more because of memtester and disk timing tests. Uploaded probes are public; they are anonymized but inventory tags and machine names are kept verbatim, so do not include sensitive identifiers in -id or -i.

hw-probe was created by Andrey Ponomarenko as the front-end client for the Linux Hardware Database project, first released in 2018. It is written in Perl and ships in the AUR, Debian/Ubuntu, Fedora, openSUSE and FreeBSD ports. The companion site, linux-hardware.org, has since collected millions of public probes used by kernel developers and distribution maintainers to track Linux hardware support over time.

lshw(1), lspci(8), lsusb(8), dmidecode(8), hwinfo(8), smartctl(8), inxi(1)