Get some base Linux info in QNAP TS-210 using console

adminLinux, QNAP0 Comment
5 min. reading

QNAPs runs on (sometimes heavily modified) Debian distributions. But, what about kernel version etc.?

There several ways of getting this information from console. Out of them following works on TS-210:

  • uname -a
  • cat /etc/issue
  • cat /proc/version

If you ever need more information on this then… LMGIFY.

In this article I’ll show you the very basic commands that can be used on QNAP TS-210 (modified Debian Linux) to obtain system release, version, hardware info etc.

uname

You can get following information out of this (description + example output on TS-210):

  • uname -r — the operating system release (turns out to be release version — 1 Sat Mar 27 16:27:06 CST 2021)
  • uname -v — the operating system version (turns out to be release date — 3.4.6)
  • uname -n — the machine’s network hostname (QNAP)
  • uname -m — the machine hardware type (armv5tel)
  • uname -s — the operating system name (Linux)
  • uname -p — the host processor type (unknown)

And for uname -a you are getting everything above, so:

Linux QNAP 3.4.6 #1 Sat Mar 27 16:27:06 CST 2021 armv5tel unknown

cat /etc/?

The /etc/ folder contains configuration files for many system services, but also a dump files containing some interesting system or hardware information.

Things that are included in TS-210 that you may find interesting includes:

  • cat /etc/filesystems — available filesystems (examples: ext3, ext2, iso9660, vfat, msdos, hfs)
  • cat /etc/fstab — static file system information
  • cat /etc/group — groups and users (examples: administrators:x:0:admin, everyone:x:100:admin)
  • cat /etc/hostname — the machine’s network hostname (= uname -n)
  • cat /etc/hosts — classic hosts file (same you’ll find in many systems, i.e. in Windows), base for hacking, includes:
    • 127.0.0.1 localhost — local loopback IP address
    • xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx QNAP — base IP address set on or assigned to your QNAP
  • cat /etc/hostname — the machine’s network hostname (= uname -n)
  • cat /etc/inittab — startup, shutdown etc. list, includes:
    • items with sysinit action — performed during startup sequence
    • items with shutdown action — stuff to do before rebooting
    • some more
  • cat /etc/issue — some extra system info (i.e. Welcome to TS-210(192.168.1.2), QNAP Systems, Inc.)
  • cat /etc/mtab — mounted devices, processes, filesystems etc. (i.e. main disks, USB disks, system partition etc.)
  • cat /etc/passwd — extended version of cat /etc/group — groups, users, ids, home dirs, shells and some more
  • cat /etc/protocols — network protocols available within your box
  • cat /etc/raidtab — current RAID configuration
  • cat /etc/services — bunch of info on network services, including: name, listening port, protocol etc.; examples:
    • ftp 21/tcp
    • http 80/tcp
    • https 443/tcp
    • mysql 3306/tcp
    • postgres 5432/tcp
  • cat /etc/tzlist — timezones (only those available on your device?)

These are just system information providers (and not all of them, of course). But, in general, the /etc folder is used to store configuration files for many system services and daemons, etc.

Including (just a few):

  • smb.conf — Samba file sharing service
  • upnpd.conf — uPNP protocol’s daemon
  • rsyncd.conf — rSync daemon’s configuration
  • my.cnf — MySQL database’s configuration
  • and more

These are all core Linux (Debian) configuration files. For QNAP-specific configuration you should rather look into /etc/config folder, which a symbolic link to /mnt/HDA_ROOT/.config/ folder.

cat /proc/?

In general, the proc/ folder stores information (in form of folders and sub folders) about each process currently running.

So, if you know such process PID (you can get it by executing top, which give you an output quite similar to Task Manager in Windows), you can execute:

  • ls -ls /proc/PID/ to see list of sub-folders for particular process, service, application or program running
  • and then execute cat /proc/PID/subfolder to get detailed information about that process.

But, we are not here for that.

Some cool information that you can get also here (just a few):

  • cat /proc/cpuinfo — detailed information about installed processor(s)
  • cat /proc/filesystems — list of all supported filesystems with nodev note, if no device is using given
  • cat /proc/meminfo — detailed information about memory usage
  • cat /proc/version — a bit more detailed system information (pity that a one-line garbage)
  • cat /proc/uptime — info about moment since last restart

I’ve listed just the few. Some more are waiting to be discovered by you.

The last value is given as Unix timestamp and relative to Unix Epoch (January 1, 1970 00:00:00). So, to get the actual value of how long your box is running since last restart you must:

  1. Get the value returned by cat /proc/uptime i.e. 5877840.93
  2. Convert it from Unix timestamp to standard date time, i.e. 5877840.93 → Tue Mar 10 1970 00:44:00
  3. Substrat it (or generally compare it) to Thu Jan 01 1970 00:00:00

Only then you’ll be able to get the information that your box is running for i.e. 2 months, 9 days and 44 minutes or 68 days, 0 hours, 44 minutes and 0 seconds.

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