How to Check System Configuration in Ubuntu?

Introduction to System Configuration

In system engineering, a system configuration defines the devices, processes, and computers that construct the system and its edge. The system configuration is more generally the particular definition of the components that define or/and prescribe what a system consists of.

The term, i.e., "system configuration", can alternatively be used for relating to a model for a generalized abstract system. The configuration information usage is not tailored to a particular usage; it stands alone as any data set. A correctly configured system ignores resource-conflict issues and makes it easier for upgrading a system with newer equipment.

• Also, this term refers to the hardware-software or settings arrangement and how all software and devices or processes collaborate with each other on the basis of a system settings file automatically created by the system or described by the user.
• Mainly, system configuration refers to the given computer system specification, from its hardware elements to the many processes and software that are executed in that system.
• It defines what models and types of devices are installed and what particular software is being utilized to execute the many parts of a computer system.
• Also, it refers to the particular settings of the operating system that have been, by default, set manually or automatically by the user or program.

A computer system, specifically an operating system, commands a group of default configurations and settings when the system comes online first. These settings command the common features and functions that make the system execute in a stable manner. The operating systems have their configuration utilities to permit users or administrators to modify the system configuration. It is known as "msconfig" or "Microsoft System Configuration Utility" for Microsoft Windows.

Sample Configuration

Below is a common SC XML System Configuration:

It gives information about one "site" and defines that there is a single host with mysql-db and user-setup elements. The host should have any account with correct parameters for a user named mysql. The configuration schema needs no XML tags that are Unix- or Windows-specific. Simply, it illustrates data as standalone information. It is the indication of a positive model of system configuration.

This model can be continued. For example, a user can have more attributes, such as "password" and "preferences". The elements can rely on other elements. Properties can be described that are passed into sub-components. The extensions could be endless and must be handled for preventing "breaking" the concept of the system configuration.

Usage of System Configuration

In practical terms, the usage of the model falls into many categories, including operations, deployment, and documentation.

Operations

In the system, there may be used for configuration data by particular types of services during system operation. For instance, a Secnager may use the configuration to inherit the MD5 passwords for many user accounts that are permitted to remotely log into hosts. A service, i.e., a system monitor, may utilize the data for determining "how to monitor" and "what to monitor" the system components. The PresentationManager might utilize the data for accessing views and menu items based on the user access privileges.

Deployment

It involves describing a set of configuration data and operating on the data for realizing the system configuration accordingly. Simply, it may be a validation of what is there to ensure that the configuration is in the event.

Some examples are available, including a Perl library opened from the command line for reading the configuration and start launching processes on the remote or local hosts to install elements. There may also be a service, i.e., SystemConfiguration, that offers an interface for other system software to use the configuration data and implement deployment-like tasks while the system is executing.

Documentation

One configuration use is to simply file what a system is. In turn, this documentation can become quite costly, thus convoluting the data model. It's important to differentiate between descriptive data and configuration data. The comments can be used at any level; however, the data bloating can decrease its usefulness.

For instance, the system configuration isn't a place for recording historical changes or design descriptions and intent for the several components. The configuration data is to be "what we want it to be" or "what it is".

Configuration Management

Configuration management is a system engineering process to establish and maintain consistency of the physical, functional, and performance attributes of a product with its operational information, design, and requirements during its life. Configuration management is a form of ITSM (IT Service Management) as described by ITIL that ensures the system configuration servers, computer systems, resources, and other assets are trusted, known, and good. It is sometimes called IT automation.

Almost all configuration management involves a higher degree of automation for achieving these goals. It is why teams utilize different tools, such as Terraform, Ansible, Puppet, and other tools of configuration management. It is easier to build redundancies and in-checks, developing the potential for omissions because of the accuracy and human error to keep assets in the wanted state using automation.

Without automation, one engineer can forget to update a software piece, and it can leave the system with an older software version that has a known vulnerability mentioned on CVE. This vulnerability can be accomplished by installing ransomware, spreading system worms, or other types of malware.

Configuration management uses in several systems, but we will be concerned with the following:

• Software
• Applications
• Networking
• Operating systems
• Databases and other storage systems
• Servers

What is the Importance of Configuration Management?

When we open the settings menu in our software, we compromise with configuration management.

We need to carefully handle it and keep track of configuration modifications to ensure traceability, or our business and end users can suffer from data leaks, data breaches, and system outages.

To improve operations and decrease cybersecurity risk, several businesses use CMDB (Configuration Management Database), configuration management, and configuration management plan to ensure good configuration management. It helps with audit processes, asset management, and project management, as well as debugging and software development.

Other advantages of configuration management are mentioned below:

• Reduced risk of security breaches and outages with visibility and change tracking to our systems.
• Cost devaluation by having complete knowledge of every element of our configuration, ignoring wasteful duplication of our technology assets.
• Increased experience for our internal staff and customers by rapidly correcting and detecting wrong configurations that could impact performance negatively.
• The strict control of our processes by enforcing and defining formal procedures and policies that govern auditing, status monitoring, and asset identification.
• Faster problem resolution and greater agility enable us to offer a higher service quality and reduce the costs of software engineering.
• Efficient modification Management by knowing our baseline configuration and accommodating the visibility to construct modifications that ignore problems.
• Quicker service restoration. We will be able to quickly recover as our configuration is automated and documented in an outage.
• Clean status accounting and good release management.

What will Happen if We Don't Apply Configuration Management?

We can ignore the costs related to configuration management by not using it at all. Although, we will pay in:

• Physical efforts to decide which system elements should modify when requirements modify.
• Failed implementations due to the requirements of the project changed, and we did not negotiate the modifications to every party.
• Absent productivity by substituting system elements with new versions without the capability to revert quickly to a working condition.
• Unwanted outages by wrongly modifying system elements because we could not determine accurately which elements were impacted by a modification.

What are the Famous Configuration Management Tools?

There are several famous tools of configuration management, which makes it complicated to find a stack of tools or a single tool that meets the requirements of the system configuration of our organization.

The necessary tradeoffs and features we need to consider such as cybersecurity, enterprise support, ease of use, compatibility with older systems, always key to scale a data center, and performance. Tools such as Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager, Puppet, and Ansible have massive communities when it comes to market share. However, there are only some replacements in the configuration management space.

Here are a few of the most famous tools we can consider:

• Ansible
  It is an agentless configuration and orchestration system that applies playbooks specified in YAML to handle our servers.
• HashiCorp Terraform
  Concentrating on server provisioning instead of server configuration. HashiCorp Terraform applies an immutable configuration method for keeping every server synced perfectly to the wanted state, ignoring configuration drift.
• Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager
  Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager is the monitoring and configuration tool of Microsoft, which handles the Windows-based asset configuration from one central admin device.
• CFEngine
  It is a configuration management tool that executes lightweight agents on the handled resources and converges the configuration to the wanted state.
• Chef
  It permits us to store configuration management routines in "cookbooks" and "recipes" that can easily be shared around teams. It supports a plethora of OSes, including Linux and Windows.
• Puppet
  It applies a Master-Slave architecture for keeping resources in the wanted state. It is one of the configuration management systems that depend on Ruby DSL (domain-specific languages) for configuration management along with chef.
• AWS OpsWorks
  It is one of the multiple solutions of AWS aimed at simplifying configuration management for organizations hosting their software on the cloud platform of Amazon. It automates the configuration, updating, and patching of servers using Puppet and Chef.
• Saltstack
  It lets us utilize the Python programming language for creating configuration templates that could be pushed out to many clients through a central master or executed with a decentralized model. Saltstack has several overlapping and commonalities aspects that offer various advantages, including infrastructure-as-code techniques that make it convenient to roll out updates and modify infrastructure.

Checking System Configurations on Ubuntu

All computers have many hardware elements. They are from distinct vendors and have various essential information related to them. If we face any issue with any of these hardware elements, this information is necessary to resolve them. For instance, if we wish to post on an online blog or forum about our issues, people can give us better explanations if they know about the hardware elements we have.

Check CPU Information

We can find several details about the CPU of our computer with the command, i.e., dmidecode, on Ubuntu. The command is as follows:

Note: If we are using any virtual machine, we will not get several details.

Check RAM Information

We can find details about the RAM or memory of our computer with the command, i.e., dmidecode. The command is as follows:

All details about our RAM should be shown.

Check Motherboard Information

We can find details about the motherboard with the command, i.e., dmidecode. The command is as follows:

We should see the below details. The vendor or the manufacturer of your motherboard, the serial number, and the product name should be mentioned here, as we can see in the following screenshot:

Check On Board Devices Details

We can check details about the built-in devices on our motherboard, like the sound card or graphic card with the command, i.e., dmidecode. The command is as follows:

As we can see, we have two onboard devices on our virtual machine: a sound card and a video card:

We can see the man page of the dmidecode command with the help of the following command for more details of it:

Check Hardware Information using lshw Command

The command, i.e., lshw, is very strong. We can use it to search hardware details of every available hardware of our computer.

We can execute the below command for listing every hardware:

As we can see, every hardware detail is mentioned in the output. It is a very long list, so we pipped the result of the command to less. We can see the manufacturer or vendor of the hardware, their part number, name, serial number, and many more things here.

Check Hardware Information using inix Command

Also, we can check hardware details with the command, i.e., inix. By default, the inix command isn't available in Ubuntu. But we can easily get it from the official Ubuntu repository.

• First, we need to update our system using the below command:

• Now, we need to install inix using the below command:

• We will press the "y" button to continue the installation process.
• We will execute the inix command to check the common hardware details. The command is as follows:

As we can see, every command hardware detail is printed in the above output.