Category: Hardware

Show Mounted Partitions

Today we’ll have a fairly easy article, one that won’t be too long, as we discuss a couple of ways to show mounted partitions. This isn’t anything complicated. A new user should be able to follow along, so long as they’re not too afraid of the terminal.

Even if a new user was afraid of the terminal, none of these commands perform actions other than providing information. If you are careful, even using copy and paste, you won’t risk harming anything. Then again, this is pretty basic stuff. You can handle it just fine! (I have faith!)

Did you notice how I said “a couple of ways”? Well, I said that because there are all sorts of ways to show mounted partitions. 

If you don’t know what a partition is, it’s pretty easy to understand. You have a storage drive. By itself, it’s pretty useless. You have to decide on a filesystem and add at least one partition for that storage drive to be useful. There are also virtual partitions that are created by, and used by, the operating system.

Additionally, that partition must be mounted to be accessible for normal read and write operations. Sometimes, you may need to unmount a drive to perform certain operations. For example, you can’t change the size of the partitions on a mounted drive.

All we will be doing in this article is showing the mounted partitions. I haven’t just picked two commands, I’ve picked the two commands that I think have the most easily processed output.

Show Mounted Partitions:

The very first paragraph mentioned the terminal. That’s because we’ll be using the terminal for these exercises. So, go ahead and press CTRL + ALT + T. Hopefully, that will open your terminal.

We shouldn’t need to install any new software for the tasks covered in this article. We will be using two different applications, but those are going to be installed by default more often than not. I told you that this one will be easy!

Show Mounted Partitions With The ‘df’ Command:

With your terminal open, you can start by verifying that the df command is installed on your system. You’d do that with this command:

With that information, you’ll not only get the version you’ll see why it’s probably installed by default. The df command is a part of ‘GNU coreutils’, which is a set of GNU-provided applications that should be installed by default.

When you check the man page, you can also that df is described as being:

df – report file system disk space usage

So, that’s probably a pretty good tool for showing your mounted partitions. The df command we’re going to use is quite simple. It looks like this:

You can check the man page to see what those flags are doing:

The command output is nice and easy to understand, but very thorough. The next command we’ll use only shows a subset of the above-mentioned virtual partitions. 

Anyhow, that command may look a bit like this:

using the df command to show mounted partitions
Yes, a lot of that is information you don’t really need to know – but now you do.

As you can see, the output from this df command is very thorough. You almost certainly won’t need that much information. Fortunately, the next command is more concise and will net you about all the information you might need in your day-to-day computing.

Show Mounted Partitions With The ‘findmnt’ Command:

This too is done in the terminal and is another way to do much of what you did in the previous section. You probably don’t have to install anything. The findmnt application is a part of ‘util-linux’ and will also be installed by default.

You can find out if the findmnt command is available with this command:

As you’ll see, is indeed part of the util-linux applications. You might as well check the man page, seeing as we’re already here. To check the findmnt man page, you’d use this command:

While you’re checking the man page, check to see how findmnt describes itself. It’s described like:

findmnt – find a filesystem

If you recall the introduction, I mentioned how you’d need a filesystem to make a partition useful. Findmnt appears to be a pretty good application for those who want to show mounted partitions.

You can run the command and get a cascade of data, much like the df command. Run this command:

But, you can run this command with a -D flag and get a subset of that partition information and this subset of information is probably all you’re going to need regularly. That command looks like this:

The more concise output from that command looks something like this:

showing mounted partitions with the findmnt command
Realistically, this is all the information you’ll likely need when you show mounted partitions.

(It was kind of broken for a while, but I fixed it so that you can click on the images and have them enlarge properly. The bug was a devious bugger, but I think I’ve nailed it.)

The output from that findmnt command is easy to read and doesn’t contain nearly as many of the virtually mounted partitions. It still contains some and I’m not sure why or what the difference is. You can see that both commands spit out slightly different bits of information – but the essential bits are there and, thankfully, they match one another.

See? I told you that it’d be easy!

Closure:

Well, at some point you may want to show mounted partitions. It’s handy information to have when you want to perform some disk operations. It can also be handy to ensure a drive is mounted properly.

There are all sorts of reasons why you might want this information. Then again, there are also a zillion ways to get this information (such as running the sudo fdisk -l command). I’ve just picked a couple of ways, though I had a preference for outputs that are easiest to read. 

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Benchmark Your GPU In Lubuntu

Today we have a simple enough article, meant for fun and information, as we talk about how to benchmark your GPU in Lubuntu. This won’t be a very long and complicated article. Even a new user should be able to follow along.

We all like to know where we stand in life. This is true even with computers. At the very least, we want to know that our computer can accomplish the tasks we need it to accomplish. One of the ways you can do this is to benchmark your computer.

I’ve previously written a couple of articles that involve benchmarking.

Benchmark Your Linux Box With Geekbench 5
Check Disk Speed In The Terminal
Graphically Examine Hardware Info With HardInfo

So, this isn’t a foreign concept to my regular readers (whom I appreciate a great deal).

A benchmark pushes your hardware to the limits and then gives you a score telling you how well it did. Usually, the next step will be using your search engine to find out how well you did against other computers. (Those with older and slow computers may not do this, but I did with a recently purchased refurbished device, and it did not do well – but it still perfectly satisfies my needs.)

Your GPU obviously controls your graphics. I do not need massive graphic capabilities. I’m content with onboard graphics and my benchmark score shows this. At most, I’m going to stream a video, watch a movie, or play a game that doesn’t require high-end graphics.

You should know about Lubuntu already. The directions for this article are for Lubuntu, but will likely work with most other distros. For this exercise, we’ll be using glmark2.

Installing glmark2:

The first step to using glmark2 is opening your terminal. To open your terminal, CTRL + ALT + T. Then, with your terminal now open, enter the following command to ensure your system’s application database is up to date:

Let that run its course and don’t worry about upgrading at this point. You can always do that later, though I’d suggest doing so as soon as realistically possible because updates tend to contain security updates and those are important.

The next goal is to install glmark2 and you do that with this command:

If you’re not using Lubuntu and you’re using a distro with Wayland, then you want a different command. That command might be something like this:

With glmark2 now installed, it would be worth your time to check the man page. This article will only cover the very basic command, literally running the command without any flags, but there are many options available for you. To check the man page, use this command:

As you can see, there are quite a few options available. I will not be doing a deep dive into those options. You can easily figure most of them out on your own. Heck, you can probably figure them all out with a little trial and error.

Now that you have the GPU benchmarking tool, glmark2, installed in Lubuntu you can run the command in the terminal…

Benchmark Your GPU In Lubuntu:

If you’ve installed glmark2 and checked the man page, you’ll see that we’ve chosen the right tool for the job. The man page describes glmark2 as:

glmark2 – OpenGL (ES) 2.0 benchmark suite

So, assuming you’ve kept your terminal open (if not, open it again) then you need to simply use the command’s name to run a benchmark on your system. It’s that simple to benchmark your GPU in Lubuntu. Just try this command:

In theory, you should not do anything with your computer while this runs. I, of course, did not listen to that advice and I’m perfectly okay with that. As I mentioned above, my graphical needs are not high. The Intel graphics are just fine for me.

That’s going to take a while, especially on an older computer like mine – and one with just an onboard GPU. This should open a new window and display a bunch of graphics in that window. If you didn’t do this in full-screen mode, that is without any flags to set that value, you’ll also be able to see quite a lot of information scrolling by in your terminal. Someone smarter than I am can tell you what that information means.

Wait for the benchmark to end, that’s when the new window closes, and collect your score from the terminal. Mine was not very high.

Then, use your favorite search engine to see how well you did compared to other users. If you want to compare your score against other computers, you can try this OpenBenchmarking link. I’m sure there are other sites where you can compare your score with others. That’s just the one I happened to find in a very brief search.

Closure:

So, I don’t know if you actually want to benchmark your GPU in Lubuntu. If you do, now you know how. It’s not terribly complicated and it is something you can do in just a few short minutes.

You’re not supposed to use your computer at the same time, but I had dozens of windows open and was streaming a video during my benchmark. In my case, it doesn’t matter to me. I have no need for more powerful graphics and I’m content with the performance I get from this device. It’s perfectly capable of meeting my needs.

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Show Your Graphics Card Version

Today’s article will not be all that complicated, consisting of just one real command that will show your graphics card version. This is information handy for things like finding drivers or for troubleshooting. You might also use this information to verify that you got the product you ordered without having to open the case.

This article won’t have a lot of substance to it. The content is just from my notes and I figured that it was useful information to have. I’m quite certain that this knowledge is out there somewhere. I’d credit the person(s) who shared the information with me, but I don’t have that information. So, thanks for the article idea, whoever you are.

There are all sorts of ways to learn about your graphics card. Of course, there are. This is Linux! We’ll just be covering one way to learn this information and to display this information in the terminal. That sounds just like the kind of thing we do here on Linux-Tips.

This time around, we’ll be installing an application. The application may not be installed by default in some distros, so we’ll cover the installation process as well. Ideally, even a brand-new user can follow along with this article. They’ll need to cut and paste as they learn a little about an application known as glxinfo.

About glxinfo:

The glxinfo application may not be installed by default and you may need to install it. You’ll find that it briefly describes itself as this:

glxinfo – show information about the GLX implementation

Importantly, the man page elaborates, giving more information:

The glxinfo program shows information about the OpenGL and GLX implementations running on a given X display.

The information includes details about the server and client-side GLX implementation, the OpenGL and GLU implementations as well as a list of available GLX visuals.

So, you can do more with glxinfo than just get the graphics card version. The odds are good that we’ll revisit glxinfo in a future article. It’s a good thing that you’ve already installed it by the time that article rolls off the presses!

Installing glxinfo:

We’ll be installing glxinfo with the terminal. You can usually just press CTRL + ALT + T and your default terminal will open up. If it doesn’t, you can assign it as a keyboard shortcut and open it from the application menu.

You may have glxinfo installed already, you can run the following command. If any information comes out the other side, you have glxinfo already installed and can skip the installation section:

With your terminal open (and you’ll need it for the next section), you may need to start this process by installing glxinfo. You should find that glxinfo is available for most distros, so use the appropriate command below:

Debian/Ubuntu/etc:

SUSE/OpenSUSE/etc:

RHEL/Fedora/etc:

Arch/Manjaro/etc:

I’m not 100% sure of the following, but:

Gentoo:

One of those should work to install glxinfo. Which one will depend on the package manager you’re using. I don’t have enough experience with Gentoo, but Google tells me that’s the command you want.

Now that you have glxinfo installed…

Show Your Graphics Card Version:

It’s hopefully true that you installed glxinfo and left your terminal open after that. If you didn’t, you’ll need to open your terminal again. You need an open terminal to run the glxinfo application. So, if you closed the terminal you should open it again now.

The first thing you can check is glxinfo’s man page. That’s nice and simple:

As you see, there aren’t a whole lot of options – but there’s a whole lot of information involved. If you want, you can just run this command:

See what I mean about being overwhelmed with information?

Fortunately, we only want to show the graphics card version. That means we can use grep for this exercise. To just show your graphics card version (and a little superfluous information, narrowed down nicely), you would want to use this command:

As you can see, the command uses grep to show fields with the vendor, the device, and the version number. That’s all you need to know for this exercise, though glxinfo does provide a great deal of additional information.

Closure:

Well, that’s about it for this article – and it is another article. This one can come in handy for things like new computers or reminding yourself what you have installed. It’s a quick and easy way to show your graphics card version and a handy application with a bunch of information. It has more information about your graphics than I’d care to know. I’m not even sure what to do with all that information.

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How To: Make A Linux Install USB

Today’s article is going to be a rather basic article, with worthwhile information, about how to make a Linux install USB. This won’t be too complicated, even if it looks complicated initially. It probably won’t even be a very long article.

If you want to install Linux, you will need some sort of install medium. That can be almost any sort of drive, including some distros that are still small enough to fit on a CD. Heck, if you can get your computer to boot to it, you could even use a MicroSD as your installation media.

We’ll be doing this in the terminal. Why? Well, because it’s not that hard and it’s a fairly universal process. You won’t even need to install anything new! But, if you don’t have any interest in doing this in the terminal (or if you’re not using Linux right now) you can always do this with a GUI. See the following article for more details:

balenaEtcher: A Tool To Turn Linux .ISO Files Into Bootable USB Drives

There’s also Rufus, should you be using a Windows computer. You have options outside of the terminal. Though, I haven’t done an article on using Rufus. I don’t have any Windows devices. (If you want to write said article, feel free to let me know. I love guest articles.)

What You Need:

These are the tools you’ll want to have available. It’s not a long list, so we won’t have too much to deal with.

  1. A blank USB drive, large enough to hold the data.
  2. Any distro with lsblk.
  3. The ability to unmount a disk.
  4. A distro with the dd command.

So, I’ll assume you have the first aspect covered. Everything else is software. They’re standard tools that are available on all but the tiniest of distros.

The first tool is lsblk, which the man page describes as:

lsblk – list block devices

Then you’ll need the obverse of mount, which is unmount. This is a part of the mount command. It doesn’t have a command of its own. That mount command is described as:

mount – mount a filesystem

And, finally, you’ll need the dd command. That’s simply described as:

dd – convert and copy a file

And that’ll be all you need. Well, you’ll need an open terminal, of course! So, let’s cover one way that you can…

Make A Linux Install USB:

Like I said, you’re going to need a USB drive. This drive must be big enough to hold the data. You’ll need to insert the drive and then open the terminal. To open the terminal, just press CTRL + ALT + T or open it from your application menu.

With your USB inserted, you need to identify where it is mounted. You can do that by running the following command:

You should be able to easily identify the USB drive by the size of the drive. The data you want will begin with “sd”, often something like “sdb” or “sdc” (enumerating as you increase mounted storage devices).

Take that information and run the following command:

The next command might look complicated, but just follow the directions and you shouldn’t have any trouble as you make a Linux install USB. The command looks like this:

For example, if the disk identifier was “sdc” and the path to the .iso was something like “~/Downloads/Lubuntu_22.04.iso” the command would look like this:

Then, just wait a few minutes. Let the dd command do its thing and you’ll end up with a bootable USB drive that will let you install Linux. (This also works for other image files, of course.)

Closure:

See? It’s not that complicated to make a Linux install USB. So long as you pay attention, you won’t have much to worry about. There are a few commands that you need to worry about, but those are basic commands in this instance.

I will warn you to be absolutely certain of the path for the dd command because it has the potential to make you have a really bad day. But, if you don’t want to deal with installing a GUI application, or you are in a position where you can’t install a GUI application, this is a way for you to make a Linux USB installation drive to get yourself out of a sticky situation.

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How To: Show Disk Information With hwinfo

Today we’re going to be having some fun with hwinfo, available everywhere and used (in this case) to show disk information with hwinfo. This isn’t going to be the most complicated of articles, so it’s safe to assume you can follow along – even if you’re a beginner. You just need to follow the directions.

The tool we’ll be using to show disk information will be hwinfo. This probably isn’t installed by default, but is a very useful tool. We’ll just explore one aspect of hwinfo but there’s a lot more to the application. There may be other articles on this hwinfo application.

Anyhow, if you’d already installed hwinfo and checked the man page, you’d learn that the application defines itself accurately, specifically as:

hwinfo – probe for hardware

That’s a pretty good description and might also be a bit of a clue about hwinfo’s features and goals. In this case, we’re simply examining one particular feature and that is how to show disk information with hwinfo.

I suppose that it’s a bit archaic calling it ‘disks’, but there are plenty of people with spinning platters. It could also be ‘drives’, to ensure we also cover solid-state drives. But, for this article, we’ll use the words interchangeably. After all, you know what I mean.

The hwinfo application is a great application, with a ton of options. It’d be far too much to cover in a single article. There’s enough fodder here for multiple applications, which is nice.

Install hwinfo:

As hwinfo is a terminal-based application, you’re going to need a terminal. You could trivially install this via a GUI application, but I needn’t explain that. I will show you how to install hwinfo with the terminal. It’s available for most distros by default. Just press CTRL + ALT + T to open your terminal, or open it manually from your application menu.

Once you have your terminal open, you’re ready to install hwinfo. You can pick from the following, as it’s a fairly universal application. Try one of the following to do so:

Debian/Ubuntu/etc:

SUSE/OpenSUSE/etc:

RHEL/Rocky/etc:

Arch/Manjaro/etc:

Gentoo/Calculate/etc:

See? You’ll find that hwinfo is an option in pretty much all the default reports. You can get a head start, and learn a lot, by checking the man page (with man hwinfo) if you’d like.

Show Disk Information With hwinfo:

Don’t close your terminal after installing hwinfo. You’re still going to need an open terminal to use hwinfo to show disk information. Fortunately, the commands are a bit unusual but not taxing. As we’re just covering how to show disk information, that will make it easier.

NOTE: To get complete information, you will need elevated permissions. In our case, we’ll be using sudo. If your distro doesn’t support sudo, you’ll need to gain elevated permissions in the manner your distro has designed.

So, with your still open terminal, you can try the first command, which is simply:

That will spit out a lot of information about the various disks you have in your system. It’s a lot of information, perhaps more than you need. If you want to show a nice summary, you’d want this command:

If you want to see a nice summary of block devices, you can just use the following command to show said block devices:

Most folks are either going to want the full information for troubleshooting or one of the latter two choices for basic information. But, you can use any of them that you want to show disk information. It’s a pretty easy process and hwinfo is a very useful application. Perhaps we’ll explore its uses soon.

Closure:

Well, today we have had a “Nor’easter” and the remains of Hurricane Lee. I was expecting it to be much more mild, but we have trees down and power outages all over the place. In fact, one outage has started a fire. 

However, that didn’t stop me! Nope! I have still not missed a single publication date. I’ve published an article every other day for a long time. So far, so good.

This time around, you got an article about how you can show disk information with hwinfo. That seemed like a fine article to write. It’s not all that long, nor is it all that complicated. If you follow the directions, you should be all set.

As such, I assume a beginner will be able to follow along and able to learn something in the process. I sometimes get feedback about using the terminal in so many articles, but it is a fairly universal tool. There’s no reason to be afraid of the terminal. Instead, embrace it and learn to use it. Once you do, you’ll understand why I write about it so frequently.

Thanks for reading! If you want to help, or if the site has helped you, you can donate, register to help, write an article, or buy inexpensive hosting to start your site. If you scroll down, you can sign up for the newsletter, vote for the article, and comment.

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