this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2025
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Got a used business laptop and found a recessed dongle in it. The original owner says they have no clue, that it’s been in there since they got it. There’s no way a dongle is keeping this thing running, is there? I’ve already swapped the OS, if that matters at all

Update: yubikey! Thank you all for the information, I’m definitely still learning

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[–] azdle@news.idlestate.org 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The command you're looking for is lsusb. There's going to be a lot in there, but for a security token like that, you're probably looking for something that says "yibikey", "Fido", or "u2f".

[–] Gullible@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Thank you! I do have a question though. What does the “ls” in lsusb stand for? I’ve found several query commands that begin with ls and it might help me remember them a bit better if I understand what they mean

[–] seathru@lemmy.sdf.org 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (4 children)

I don't know it's proper name but "list" is an easy way to remember it. Want to see a list of what's in a folder? ls. Want to see a list of USB devices? lsusb.

[–] Zachariah@lemmy.world 10 points 1 month ago

The name inherited from Multics and is short for "list".

https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Ls

[–] Gullible@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 month ago

Alright, that’s not hard to remember. Thank you!

[–] SatyrSack@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 1 month ago

ls or l is also often used as an option/switch that is passed to another program to list something. Want to list all active Screen sessions? screen -ls. Want to list all mounted filesystems? mount -l

[–] vaionko@sopuli.xyz 3 points 1 month ago

List of PCI devices? lspci.