xref: /pciutils/README (revision a33d0eb7)

This package contains the PCI Utilities, version 2.1.9.

Copyright (c) 1997--2002 Martin Mares <[email protected]>

All files in this package can be freely distributed and used according
to the terms of the GNU General Public License, either version 2 or
(at your opinion) any newer version. This is the same distribution
policy as for the Linux kernel itself -- see /usr/src/linux/COPYING
for details.


1. What's that?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The PCI Utilities package contains a library for portable access to PCI bus
configuration registers and several utilities based on this library.

Currently, pciutils work on all versions of Linux and they also have somewhat
experimental support for FreeBSD and AIX. It should be very easy to add support
for other systems as well (volunteers wanted; if you want to try that, please
send the patches to me, so that I can include them in the next version).

The utilities include:  (See manual pages for more details)

  - lspci: displays detailed information about all PCI busses and devices.

  - setpci: allows to read from and write to PCI device configuration
    registers. For example, you can adjust the latency timers with it.
    CAUTION: There is a couple of dangerous points and caveats, please read
    the manual page first!


2. Compiling and (un)installing
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Just run "make" to compile the package and then "make install" to install it.

If you want to change the default installation location, please override
the ROOT and PREFIX variables specified in the Makefile -- e.g., you can
use "make PREFIX=/opt/pciutils ROOT=/opt/pciutils install" to create
a separate installation not interfering with the rest of your system.

When you are bored of dumping PCI registers, just use "make uninstall".


3. Getting new ID's
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The database of PCI ID's (the pci.ids file) gets out of date much faster
than I release new versions of this package.

If you are missing names for any of your devices or you just want to stay
on the bleeding edge, download the most recent pci.ids file from
http://pciids.sf.net/. You can try "make update-ids" to accomplish that
automatically (requires wget and bzip2).

If your devices still appear as unknown, please send us their ID's and
names, the detailed instructions for submissions are listed on the
sf.net web page.


4. Available access methods
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The library (and therefore all the utilities) know a variety of methods for
accessing the PCI registers. Here is a list of them:

   /proc/bus/pci	on all Linux systems since kernel 2.1.82.
   direct port access	on all Linux systems with i386, to be used when
			/proc/bus/pci is unavailable or you want to scan
			the bus manually when hunting kernel bugs.
   dumps		reading of dumps produced by `lspci -x'.
   lsdev + odmget	used on AIX
   /dev/pci		used on FreeBSD


5. Using the library
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There is still no documentation for the library, if you want to use it
in your programs, please follow the comments in lib/pci.h and in the
example program lib/example.c.


6. Feedback
~~~~~~~~~~~
If you have any bug reports or suggestions, send them to the author.

If you have any new ID's, I'll be very glad to add them to the database, but
please take a look at http://pciids.sf.net/ first and follow the instructions.

If you want, subscribe to [email protected] (send
"subscribe linux-pci" to [email protected]).
Release notes about new versions will be send to the list and problems with
the Linux PCI support will be probably discussed there, too.


7. Miscellanea
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
You also might want to look at the pciutils web page containing release
notes and other news: http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~mj/pciutils.html .

There also exists a utility called PowerTweak which is able to fine tune
parameters of many chipsets much better than the Bridge Optimization code
in Linux kernel (already removed in 2.3.x). See http://powertweak.sf.net/
for more information.

					Have fun
							Martin