The client hardware tool is a small utility that can be used to extract hardware information and optionally send a heartbeat and the gathered machine information to the Exalsius API.

• Read hardware information such as GPU, CPU, RAM, I/O from the machine
• Collect software and operating system details
• Send the hardware information to the API server
• Continuously send a heartbeat to the API server to signal that the client is still alive
• Self-register a new node and optionally install a systemd timer for periodic heartbeats

Download the latest release from the releases page.
Ensure that the binary is executable. If not, run chmod +x ./client-hw-info*
Execute ./client-hw-info* --skip-heartbeat

Run cargo build --release.

The compiled binary will be available at ./target/release/client-hw-info.

Execute ./target/release/client-hw-info if you built the project locally, or run the downloaded release binary.

There are three main execution modes.

Use this mode when you only want to inspect the machine locally.

./target/release/client-hw-info --skip-heartbeat

This collects hardware, software, and OS details and exits without contacting the API. No configuration file is created.

For the first heartbeat-enabled run, provide:

--api-url <url> Base API URL, for example https://api.exalsius.ai
--access-token <token> Access token used for authentication
--node-id <id> Node id of the existing node

Example:

./target/release/client-hw-info \
  --api-url https://api.exalsius.ai \
  --access-token <token> \
  --node-id <node-id>

After the first successful run, the tool stores the values in $HOME/.config/exalsius/config.env and reuses them automatically on later executions.

If you pass --api-url, --access-token, or --node-id again later, the stored configuration will be updated.

Use self-registration when the node does not exist yet in the Exalsius backend.

Required arguments:

--self-register Start the self-registration workflow
--api-url <url> Base API URL
--register-token <token> Registration token from the user profile
--username <name> SSH username used to access the node
--private-key-id <id> Private key id configured for node access
--hostname <name> Node name you want to assign to the node --ip-addr <ip> Public or reachable IP address of the node
--port <port> SSH port of the node

Example:

./target/release/client-hw-info \
  --self-register \
  --api-url https://api.exalsius.ai \
  --register-token <register-token> \
  --username ubuntu \
  --private-key-id <private-key-id> \
  --hostname gpu-node-01 \
  --ip-addr 203.0.113.10 \
  --port 22

The self-register request sends the collected hardware, software, and system information to the API, creates $HOME/.config/exalsius/config.env, and stores the returned node_id and access token for later heartbeat runs.

Self-registration is intended for the initial setup of a node. Afterward, run the tool normally without --self-register.

By default, a successful self-registration also creates and enables:

/etc/systemd/system/client-hw-info.service
/etc/systemd/system/client-hw-info.timer

The timer triggers the tool every 15 minutes.

This requires permission to write to /etc/systemd/system and to execute systemctl. Run the self-registration command with sufficient privileges if you want the timer to be installed automatically.

If you do not want the tool to create systemd units, add:

--skip-systemd

Because the generated service uses the current binary path as ExecStart, run self-registration from the final binary location you want systemd to use, e.g., /usr/local/bin.

The tool stores its runtime configuration in:

$HOME/.config/exalsius/config.env

The file contains:

NODE_ID=<node id>
API_URL=<api url>
AUTH_TOKEN=<access token>

Use --version or -V to print the current version.