CSCI251 - Systems and Networks

Lab1 - Computer Hardware Inventory

Wednesday Jan 13, 2009

The assignment report is due (via e-mail) by 8 am Monday Jan 18.
Reports will not be accepted from students who did not attend the lab session.
Reports not following the specification given at the end of this document will not be accepted.
Late reports would not be accepted. (It would be a good idea to submit them well before the time due.)

Instructions

Task #1: External examination of your assigned computer

Examine your machine (front panel and back) and its peripherals. Record the folloing:

Monitor type, model, vendor
Mouse type, model, vendor
Keyboard type, model, vendor
Computer type, model, vendor
Externally visible storage devices
Externally visible ports, their number, and the function of any if they are in use

Task #2: Hardware information obtained through software reports

We could open the machine case and determine some information. Although a good idea, we don't want the machines for a general purpose lab to be jeopardized by such an exercise. Additionally, more and more functionality is being incorporated into the CPU or onto the mother board and can be hard to determine visually. Fortunately, when the machine starts up, the BIOS (Basic Input Output System) and OS (Operating System) investigate the hardware for their own purposes and may make that information available. Certainly, Linux does so.

Linux commands which give information about hardware include:

lspci (list information from the pci bus database)
lsusb (list information from the universal serial bus database)
cat /proc/cpuinfo (list information about the CPUs)
cat /proc/meminfo (list information about the memory)
cat /proc/ioports (list information about the input/output ports)
cat /proc/interrupts (list information about the assignment of hardware interrupts
dmesg (print kernel bootup messages)

There are other commands which may or may not be available, but the above are included with most Linux installations. Now we'll try them. Record in your own words, what the following commands report (the instructor will explain the syntax):

lspci | less
Then try
lspci -v | less
lspci -vv | less
but only record the nature of the difference in the information reported when compared to the prior lsusb command syntax.
lsusb | less
Then try
lsusb -v | less
but only record the nature of the difference in the information reported when compared to the prior lsusb command syntax.
cat /proc/cpuinfo | less
cat /proc/meminfo | less
cat /proc/ioports | less
cat /proc/interrupts | less
dmesg | less

Task #3: Submit your results

Submit your report for this first assignment to the instructor (jayeward@viu.ca) by email per the following specification:

Report Specification

Submit as an email attachment with this file name format:

<username>-lab1.txt
Eg: jayeward-lab1.txt
The file must be plain ascii (Eg. not a word document, not pdf, etc.)
The report itself must consist of

a single cover sheet specifying

the lab number
the course number
the date the report was finished
your name and that of any collaborators
the machine ID (Eg. gfx10)

one or more sheets containing the information you gathered in tasks #1 and #2, organized to follow the numbering scheme used in those tasks