PHASE 02Beginner3 days

Know Your Hardware

Objective: Identify the physical components inside your machine and query them from the command line.

Lessons5 free
  1. 012.1 The Parts Inside a Computer25 min
  2. 022.2 How the Parts Talk: Buses, PCIe, SATA, NVMe, USB20 min
  3. 032.3 Asking Linux What Is Inside30 min
  4. 042.4 Reading Specs and Finding the Bottleneck25 min
  5. 05Lab: Phase 2, Know Your Hardware45 min
The Mission

You're working on a computer. You should know what's inside it. Not at an electrical engineering level, but enough to tell someone what you're running, what it's capable of, and what you'd need to upgrade if the job required it.

Understand what each component does: CPU executes instructions, RAM is short-term memory, storage is long-term memory, NIC is the network connection, motherboard connects everything.

CLI hardware commands
lscpuCPU details
free -hRAM in human-readable format
lsblkBlock devices (storage drives and partitions)
lspciAll PCI devices (NICs, GPU, controllers)
lsusbAll USB devices connected
sudo dmidecode -t memoryDetailed RAM info (slots, speed, type)
cat /proc/cpuinfoRaw CPU information
ip link showNetwork interfaces
The Challenge4 tasks
  1. 1

    Run every command listed. Record the output.

  2. 2

    Write a hardware spec sheet for your machine in plain English: CPU, core count, RAM amount, storage type and size, NIC (wired/wireless), GPU.

  3. 3

    If your machine has an access panel, open it. Identify the CPU heatsink/fan, the RAM sticks, the storage drive, and the NIC. If it's a laptop, find a teardown video for your exact model and watch it.

  4. 4

    Answer this: If you needed to add more RAM to this machine, what type would you buy? What is the maximum it supports?

Previous
Phase 1: Get a Machine Running
Next
Phase 3: Learn to Talk to Your Machine