Get started with hwctl

This tutorial shows you how to use the hwctl command-line tool to check the certification status of your hardware configuration.

Install hwctl

On Questing Quokka (25.10) or later, you can install hwctl using apt:

sudo apt-get install hwctl

On earlier Ubuntu releases, you can install the hwctl snap:

sudo snap install hwctl

Check certification status

Note

The client requires root access since we collect the hardware information using SMBIOS data.

To check your machine’s certification status, simply run hwctl with root privileges:

user@host:~$

sudo hwctl

{
  "status": "Not Seen"
}

In the above example, the specific configuration of the machine has not been certified yet, so the status is “Not Seen”. Depending on your hardware configuration, you may see different certification statuses, such as “Certified”, “Not Seen” (not certified), “Certified Image Exists”, or “Related Certified System Exists”.

Next steps

Now that you know how to use hwctl, you can learn more about the API response types and data structures in the hwapi schema.