Below is a list of commands used to scan *nix based systems. Depending on your distribution, not all commands will be used.
cat
df
dpkg
echo
equery
hal-find-by-property
hal-get-property
ifconfig
lspci
grep
pciconf
pkg_info
rpm
sudo dmidecode
sysctl
type
uname
uptime
which
Full root access is not necessary, but using an account with sudo rights is recommended. Sudo is only required to run dmidecode and if sudo is not installed Lansweeper will try to run dmidecode without sudo. If dmidecode cannot be executed for some reason, some hardware information will not be scanned, but the rest of the scanning process will still be executed.