Question

You want to generate a report that includes a description of each of the hardware components on your Linux server, as well as serial numbers and BIOS revisions. Which of the following utilities or commands can provide this information in a human-readable format?

a) ls
b) ps
c) lspci
d) cat

Answer 1

To report on hardware components, serial numbers, and BIOS revisions, use the lspci command along with dmidecode and lshw on a Linux server. The ls, ps, and cat commands are not suitable for this task.

Step-by-step explanation:

To generate a report that includes descriptions of hardware components, serial numbers, and BIOS revisions on a Linux server, you would use the lspci, dmidecode, and lshw utilities. These commands provide detailed information in a human-readable format. The ls, ps, and cat commands would not be suitable for this purpose as they serve different functions:

• ls is used to list directory contents.
• ps displays information about active processes.
• cat concatenates and displays file contents.

lspci is particularly useful for listing all PCI devices, but it does not display serial numbers or BIOS revisions. Even though not mentioned in the options, dmidecode is a powerful tool for retrieving BIOS version information and hardware serial numbers, and lshw (List Hardware) provides a comprehensive overview of the hardware configuration.