lspci

How lspci Works

1. Scanning PCI Buses: lspci scans the PCI buses in the system to identify all connected PCI devices. It reads the PCI configuration space of each device to gather information.

2. Reading Configuration Space: The PCI configuration space contains registers that provide details about the device, such as vendor ID, device ID, class code, and more.

3. Decoding Information: lspci decodes the raw data from the configuration space into human-readable information. It uses a database of known vendor and device IDs to provide meaningful names.

4. Displaying Information: The utility displays the information in a structured format, showing details like the bus number, device number, function number, vendor, device name, and more.

Key Features

• Basic Information: By default, lspci shows a summary of each PCI device.

• Detailed Information: Using the -v (verbose) option, lspci provides more detailed information about each device.

• Tree View: The -t option displays the devices in a tree format, showing the hierarchy of buses and devices.

• Database Lookup: The -nn option includes both numeric and textual IDs for vendors and devices.

• Kernel Drivers: The -k option shows the kernel drivers handling each device.

Example Usage

Supported Systems

lspci works on Unix-like operating systems, including:

• Linux: Commonly used on various Linux distributions.

• FreeBSD: Available as part of the pciutils package.

• NetBSD: Supported with the pciutils package.

• OpenBSD: Available with the pciutils package.

It is not natively available on Windows or macOS, but similar functionality can be achieved using other tools specific to those operating systems.