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I'm having trouble with my SD card, and have been asked to inspect the output of tail -f /var/log/syslog, sudo lspci -v -nn, sudo lsusb, and sudo lshw. tail shows nothing when I insert the card, so there's nothing to post - no worries there. Inspecting the output of the other commands, I can't find any evidence of an SD card being listed, so I'd like to dump the whole output in Gist for someone else to inspect and double-check.

Can I safely dump this output to a public location without compromising security? It looks to me like if I X out the device serial numbers, you won't learn anything about my individual machine. But I'd like to be sure :)

I don't mind someone being able to identify what kind of machine I have, or being able to learn something that would enable them to compromise my machine if they had physical access - I've heard the Ubuntu security model can be circumvented with physical access anyway.

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lofidevops
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1 Answers1

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Syslog contains errors or application logs. You will find php logs, restarts of programs...

lshw will return what hardware you are running in a very detailed way.

lsusb will return info about your usb device and it's driver.

lspci will give some more info about attached pci devices.

It's basic trouble shooting really, they want to know when you insert your SD card what errors are given in the syslog and what type of hardware you are running to check for incompabilities.

It's nothing special actually for a desktop. Just read what you post in the syslog as it might contain an email address from time to time (but probably not because you are using it as a desktop).

So in short, it is not dangerous in your situation.

Lucas Kauffman
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