Category: Command Line

A Little About The ‘lscpu’ Command

In today’s article we’re going to do what the title says, we’re going to learn a little about the ‘lscpu’ command. We’ll just touch the ways you’re likely to use ‘lscpu’ and that’s it. Then again, there’s not much more to it than that, so it’s going to be easy enough for a new Linux user to understand. You’re invited to read on…

As mentioned in the last article, and in the article before that, I’m going to take some time to cover some of the basic commands. However, I’m going to try to intersperse them, that is mix them up a bit, so that it’s not too boring for myself and my regular readers who are beyond this level.

The first of these articles was:

A Little About The ‘lsusb’ Command.

This article will cover ‘lscpu’. If it’s not obvious, this command will list information about your CPU. In fact, the man page describes ‘lscpu’ like:

lscpu – display information about the CPU architecture

And, sure enough, that’s the information we’re after in this article.

Of course, this is another command that gets run in the terminal. It’s an application that comes with ‘util-linux’ and is something you shouldn’t need to install. You should be able to use the ‘lscpu’ command without installing anything. So, there’s that…

Rather than drag the intro out, let’s just jump into it…

About The ‘lscpu’ Command:

As I mentioned in the intro, ‘lscpu’ is a terminal command. Of course, this means you need an open terminal. You should open one now. If you don’t know how to open your terminal, just press CTRL + ALT + T and your default terminal should open.

With your terminal now open, simply run the ‘lscpu’ command:

Tada! You have all the information you really need to know about your CPU – and quite a bit more information. So, let’s see what else we can do with the ‘lscpu’ command.

Let’s say you want some extended information. You can go about that with the -e flag. That’s easy enough to do, a simple command. It looks like this:

The outcome from that command would probably look a bit like:

the output of lscpu
As you can see, this CPU isn’t anything all that fancy. It’s effective and efficient!

As you can see, there’s nothing too fancy there.

You can actually select the fields you want to output from that command. For example, you can see the CPU and the CORE fields like this:

The only other way you’re going to use ‘lscpu’ is likely to be with grep. For example, if you want to know what architecture your CPU supports, you can run this command:

There’s more to ‘lscpu’, but you’re not likely to really need it for anything. If you do need more from ‘lscpu’, you just check the man page like so:

The man page should help you with anything more than what’s covered in this article. There’s not all that much more that’s useful, we’ve at least examined the ‘lscpu’ command.

Closure:

Yup, there’s another article. This article does what it attempted to do – which is share the most useful ways to use the ‘lscpu’. If you find yourself in a position where you need fairly detailed CPU commands, then ‘lscpu’ is the command you’re looking for.

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Control Your WiFi With ‘rfkill’ And More

In today’s article, we’re going to learn how to control your WiFi with ‘rfkill’ and we’ll be learning a bit more than that. I think you’ll find ‘rfkill’ to be a nifty and useful terminal-based command to learn. Is this article appropriate for a beginner? Maybe? Maybe not? I’ll do my best to make it approachable for anyone at any level.

By the way, I’ve decided to intersperse the articles about simple commands like ‘lsusb’. I don’t want to bore my more advanced readers – and I don’t want to bore myself. I’ve decided to make the time necessary, even though I’m pretty busy. I’ll be busy for a little more than a week. (Ask me in private, if you want.)

Anyhow, you should learn about ‘rfkill’, as it’s a pretty handy tool for controlling your wireless. If you look at the name, there should be some indication that it’s actually more than just WiFi. You can use ‘rfkill’ to manage Bluetooth, for example. Bluetooth is also wireless communication. As such, you can use ‘rfkill’ to manage that as well.

So, what is ‘rfkill’? Let’s see how the man page defines it:

rfkill – tool for enabling and disabling wireless devices

See? It says what you’d expect, assuming you read the previous paragraph. The title only mentions WiFi, but that’s really due to space and convenience. You can use ‘rfkill’ to manage both WiFi and Bluetooth. Pretty handy, huh?

Well then, let’s just get the party started…

Control Your WiFi with ‘rfkill’:

Sure enough, you use ‘rfkill’ in the terminal. On Linux-Tips.us, we do a whole lot of stuff in the terminal. So, open your terminal now. If you don’t know how to open your terminal, just press CTRL + ALT + T and your terminal should just pop open.

With your terminal now open, let’s first gather some information:

The output should look a little bit like this, or a lot like this:

gathering information with rfkill
The output should be fairly easy to understand for my delightful readers! I have faith in you!

The information you’re after “ID,TYPE-DESC,SOFT,HARD” is easy to understand. 

The first column is the ID number and the second column is a description of the device. The third column is if there’s a ‘soft block’ on the device, and the fourth column is if there’s a ‘hard block’ on the device.

If you see a ‘soft block’, that’s when there’s some software that disabled the device. A ‘hard block’ is when there’s a hardware block on the device. If it is soft blocked, you’ll need a software solution to turn it on – like ‘rfkill’.

Additionally, when you see a ‘hard block’, it means there’s probably a physical switch (often an Fn + F* key combination, perhaps labeled something like ‘Airplane Mode’) that is keeping the device powered off. You need to physically enable the device to make it work.

Importantly, the ‘rfkill’ application can do nothing about a hard block. But, it can do something about a soft block. If you want to unblock WiFi, try this:

Using my computer’s output, to unblock the WiFi the command would be:

You can also unblock with the description. To unblock the WiFi with the description looks like:

Of course,  you can also do the opposite. Instead of ‘unblock’ you would use ‘block’. That means the opposite of the above command would be:

If you want, you can also just ‘toggle’ the devices. When you toggle it, it turns off if it was on – and it turns on if it was off. You do that with the ID. If I wanted to toggle the wireless, the command would look like:

That will turn my WiFi off (if it was on) or it will turn my WiFi on (if it was currently turned off). See? It’s pretty simple!

Well, I hope I’ve made it simple. If it’s not simple, I hope it’s at least approachable. Like always, feel free to drop a question as a comment. If I don’t have an answer, I’ll try to direct you to someone who does.

Also, don’t be afraid of the man page. There’s a lot more to ‘rfkill’ than I’ve covered in this article. We’ve mostly just scratched the surface. To check the man page:

That’ll give you all the information you want. Plus, I’m sure others have authored pages that will go into more depth. We tend to not do too much of that here. I just want you to be up and running, not Linux gurus. If you want to be a Linux guru, you’ll need a whole lot more than just this site!

Closure:

Well, I’m glad you made it through today’s article. I tried to keep it nice and simple, simply showing you a way to control your WiFi with ‘rfkill’. But, there’s more to it, including Bluetooth. I like to think I’ve made this approachable for even a new user, but maybe not…

Again, feel free to comment about this. Is it easy enough for a new person? How about a new person coming from a Google search? Is it easy enough for a novice, someone completely new to computers? (Probably not, but let me know what you think. Thanks!)

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A Little About The ‘lsusb’ Command.

Today’s article will not be all that long or all that complicated, as we’ll just be learning a little about the ‘lsusb’ command. It seems like a good idea to cover it now, early in the year. I’ve been meaning to get to writing this article for a while.

Over the next few days, you will probably see some similar-looking articles. This is just the start. There are other similar commands and we’re going to cover those. Many of my readers will know some (or all) about these commands, and that’s okay. After all, our goal is getting people up to speed.

Today’s command will be the ‘lsusb’ command. If you check the man page, it’s described accurately – like so:

lsusb – list USB devices

As you can see, you use the ‘lsusb’ command when you want to learn about your system’s USB buses and the devices connected to them. You shouldn’t need to install anything. The ‘lsusb’ application is almost certainly available by default.

We probably won’t be covering all the ‘lsusb’ options. We’re just going to cover those options that you’re most likely to use. There’s always the man page for when you want more options. There’s really no need to get to deep in an article like this.

About The ‘lsusb’ Command:

The ‘lsusb’ command is a command that’s run only in the terminal. So, of course, you’ll need to have an open terminal available. If you just press CTRL + ALT + T and your default terminal should open. Tada! It’s pure witchcraft!

With your terminal now open, the simplest form of ‘lsusb’ is to just run the command without any flags. Like so:

You’ll likely get an output similar to this:

output from the 'lsusb' command
This is just the ‘lsusb’ output from a handy laptop. It’s pretty basic, with nothing connected.

As you can see, it’s not always just the actual USB ports on the side of your device that are USB devices. In the above screenshot, you can see that the wireless card, webcam, and Bluetooth devices are all on the USB bus. They’re not actually connected to a physical USB port, they’re just using the same underlying tech without actually having physical ports.

There are other things you can do with ‘lsusb’, like view the output in tree format. This is great if you’ve got things like USB hubs with things attached to them. It’s good organization and the command is simply:

The only other ‘lsusb’ command you’re likely to use is the ‘verbose’ mode. Like oh so many other applications, that’s the -v flag. The command looks like:

This is not to be confused with lsusb -V – which will show you the version. If you do that, you’ll also learn that the ‘lsusb’ command is a part of the ‘usbutils’ package. 

There’s not all that much more to the ‘lsusb’ command. Those are the ‘lsusb’ commands I’ve found myself using more than any others. They’re also the most used commands I’d ask a user to run when diagnosing a problem with their USB devices. If you want, you can learn more by checking the man page:

There’s more information in the man page about running the ‘lsusb’ command. Feel free to check it out and ask any questions needed.

Closure:

I’m going to cover some pretty basic stuff in the next few articles. I may intersperse them with other articles, so that folks don’t get bored. Don’t be bashful, leave a comment or two if you want. I love getting new comments and the site’s starting to grow quite nicely. Get your comments in early!

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Show RAM Information With Ramfetch

Today’s article is going to be an interesting one, an article where you learn how to show RAM information with Ramfetch. For many of you, I expect Ramfetch will be a completely new application, which is nice. However, this article should be simple enough for even a new user. Read on and learn more about your RAM!

By now, you’ve seen some of the following articles:

Neofetch
Screenfetch
CPUfetch

Well, this time around, we’re going to be using a similar application – but one meant specifically for RAM. The name of this application is ‘Ramfetch‘. Let’s just say the idea will be familiar, as you’re already aware of similar applications. At the end, you end up with a handy screen to screenshot to show your friend and family – or to learn from. Bragging rights is always a good reason!

So, then why would you want to do this? Well, Ramfetch gives you some good information about your RAM. It’ll do the basics, like show you what’s free, what’s available, and the total amount of RAM. But, it shows you quite a bit more than that, and it’s data worth looking at for those who want to know more about their RAM.

What we’ll be doing is cloning a git repository, moving a file, and changing the permissions to ensure it can be executed so that you can run the command from anywhere within the terminal.

You’ll need ‘git’ installed, and that should be installed by default in pretty much every major distro. If it’s not, check your package manager – or simply follow the URL in the article and perform the operations manually.

With all that said, let’s just jump into the article!

Show RAM Information With Ramfetch:

Of course, you’re going to need an open terminal. Ramfetch is a terminal-based tool. So, open your default terminal emulator. If you don’t know how to open the terminal, you can do so with your keyboard – just press CTRL + ALT + T and your default terminal should open.

UPDATE: Without letting me know, they changed things up. Follow these new instructions.

With your terminal open, let’s clone the project:

Now, let’s move it to a directory where you can always use it from the terminal, regardless of which directory you’re in:

The next step is to make Ramfetch executable:

With that said and done, just execute the ‘ramfetch’ command to show RAM information with Ramfetch. It’s simply:

Your output might look a little something like this:

ramfetch output
See? It gives you quite a bit of information about your RAM. Handy, huh?

There you have it. You can now show RAM information with Ramfetch! Pretty simple, huh? There’s no man page and the ramfetch --help command doesn’t really show you any other ways to run Ramfetch.

Here’s a better image, as supplied by the author of Ramfetch (o69mar):

Another Ramfetch image.
It does indeed look better, so there’s that!

Closure:

There’s another article said and done. Welcome to the new year and I hope you had a safe New Year’s Eve this year. We start the new year off with a simple enough command, learning how to show RAM information with Ramfetch.

I’ve not missed a publication schedule yet, so we’ll see how much longer this can go on. (I’m sure I’ll miss a publication deadline at some point, but today is not that day. In fact, I wrote this days ahead of time!) So far, so good! I never thought it’d reach this level, by the way.

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Let’s Have A Happy New Year In The Terminal

Today’s article is going to be just another fun article, where we have a happy New Year in the terminal. Why in the terminal? Because, why not in the terminal? If you want to celebrate the New Year holiday in the terminal, read on and see how.

You won’t learn much in this article, but it can tie back to a couple of previous articles. This is just a fun article. As for articles it might tie into, check these previous articles:

Add A Message Of the Day (MOTD) To SSH
How To: Show An SSH Banner

If you read those two articles, or somehow remember them, you’ll see a common theme mentioned – that is ‘ASCII’. ASCII stands for “American Standard Code for Information Interchange”. Or, in plain language, text.

Text, terminal, and a New Year celebration? Darned right, we’re gonna have fun. Well, maybe not too much fun… But, I promise it won’t be too educational.

Yes, I realize that there are a variety of calendars on the planet. Yes, I know that there are other New Year celebrations. If this isn’t your New Year holiday, though this will technically be posted on my New Year’s Eve day, you can save this article and celebrate it when your holiday rolls around.

So, with all that in mind, let’s go ahead and get into the article…

Happy New Year In The Terminal:

You guessed it, you need an open terminal! So, open one up. If you don’t know how to open the terminal, you can do so with your keyboard – just press CTRL + ALT + T and your default terminal should open.

With your terminal now open, install ‘figlet’.

APT using distros:

YUM using distros:

DNF using distros:

You may find ‘figlet’ available for other distros. If you do, you should install it before going on. You will need ‘figlet’ for the remainder of this article.

With ‘figlet’ now installed, you can check the man page:

We’ll just be using a couple of features available with ‘figlet’, but the man page is pretty informative. You can do quite a bit with ‘figlet’.

Using figlet:

While still in your terminal, you can just use ‘figlet’ in its most basic form:

The output of that command should look similar to this image:

figlet displaying a banner in the terminal
See? You have your terminal saying Happy New Year! Festive, huh?!?

You can also use ‘figlet’ by loading the data from the file. It’s easy enough to use ‘figlet’ to display information from a file, I’ll show you. Let’s use one of my favorites, nano:

Let’s start by making the file:

Add the following text:

Now save the file with nano. That’s pretty easy, but I’ll show you. Just press CTRL + X, then Y, and then ENTER. That should save the file as ‘hny’ in whatever directory you were working in.

So, let’s use ‘figlet’ to show the contents of our ‘hny’ file:

There you have it. If you go back to the article’s introduction, you’ll see a couple of links. In those instances, you can actually call ‘figlet’ to show the contents of a file, for things like an SSH banner. They all kinda tie together, if you want them to.

Closure:

And there you have it. You have another article. This time, you’ve learned nothing – except how to have a happy New Year in the terminal. Well, you’ve also learned a bit about ‘figlet’, which is nice. Either way, enjoy the holiday and thanks for sticking with me throughout the past year!

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