Devices
Linux interacts with attached hardware mounting it as device file (See file types)
Device creation process
When a new device is attached, the corresponding device driver in the Linux kernel identifies the state change and generates a uEvent. This event is forwarded to the user-space device manager daemon, udev, which then dynamically creates a device file under the /dev filesystem for the new device.
Accessing devices information
Accessing logs
The kernel logs can be inspected for logs about device attachment, errors, etc. This can be done for example with
dmsgUDEV information
One can query udev about a certain device:
udevadm info --query=path --name=/dev/sda5A “live monitor” can also be put in place to see real time udev signals and kernel messages
udevadm monitorPCI device information
One can query specifically the PCI devices attached. Normally these are all devices that are not storage like mouse, ethernet card, wifi card, keyboard, etc:
lspciBlock device information
In the same way, block devices (normally storage) can be listed:
lsblkGeneral information
Finally detailed information on the hardware configuration of the machine is also available. This can be a bit too much but can report exact memory configuration, firmware version, mainboard configuration, CPU version and speed, cache configuration, among others:
lshw