Every admin knows how to retrieve information about the system on which they are working. How many cores does the CPU have? cat /proc/cpuinfo! Is eth3 a gigabit interface? ip l sh! But instead of many tools, you can just use one: inxi [1].

Suppose I need an overview of a machine with which I don't normally work. Then, I call inxi without any parameters and get some basic information about the hardware (CPU, clock speed, RAM, and disk size) and the system (kernel and shell processes). If I want to see a few details, the -F parameter provides information on the video and audio hardware, partitioning, RAID, temperatures, and fan speeds (Figure 1).

Figure 1: "Extensive" is probably the best description of what inxi bundles into its system overview here.

If I'm only interested in a particular component, I can target this with specific parameters, such as -C, -A, and -G, which stand for information on the CPU, audio, and graphics, respectively. Information on the RAM is returned after a (lowercase!) -m, which takes some getting used to.

Memory Details

Running with root privileges, inxi tells me more about the RAMe: Apparently four 2GB DDR modules are plugged into my test machine and clocked at 1600MHz – yes, this is a fairly ancient beast (Figure 2). The -c4 parameter shown in Figures 1 and 2 is responsible for the color scheme. The default color scheme is not easily legible on terminals with a light background, but thanks to the plethora of options from -c1 to -c32, selectable sets are available to suit your taste.

Figure 2: If you give inxi root privileges, you are rewarded with precise information on the computer's memory banks.

I can even talk inxi into a spot of simple process monitoring. If I want to know which five (this is the default value) processes are currently hogging the most RAM, inxi -t m will help me find out. If I want to see the top 10 processes, I enter -t m10. If I hear the CPU fan humming, on the other hand, I just need to replace the m with a c to view the processor load. You can also combine the two: inxi -t cm 10 returns the top 10 RAM and CPU hogs.

At the end of this informative newscast on the computer, I'll take a quick look at the weather: inxi -w Berlin, Germany tells me what the situation looks like outside the server room.