discover - hardware detection utility

discover [options] [devices]

discover is a command-line hardware detection utility.

In each of the following options, BUSES is a comma-separated list of bus types to probe, and DEVICES is a blank-separated list of device types. The following bus types are current recognized: pci, isa, pcmcia, usb, ide, scsi, parallel, and serial. The following device types are currently recognized: bridge, cdrom, disk, ide, scsi, usb, ethernet, modem, sound, and video. The word all may be given as a device type to specify each of the possible devices.

-f FORMAT, --format=FORMAT

Print results in the specified format. The format string FORMAT is parsed in the style of a printf(3) format string, with %V expanding to the vendor name, %M expanding to the model name, %m expanding to the module name, %d expanding to the device file path, %S expanding to the name of the X server, %D expanding to the name of the X driver (for the XFree86 4.x X server), and %i expanding to the device ID. This option is useful for those who want to process the output of discover, since only one of the vendor, model, module, device, xserver and xdriver options can be specified. Do not forget that a \n must be specified at the end of the format string if a trailing newline is desired.

--enable=BUSES

Enable detection of devices on the bus types BUSES.

--enable-all

Enable detection of devices on all supported bus types.

--disable=BUSES

Disable detection of devices on the bus types BUSES.

--disable-all

Disable detection of devices on all supported bus types.

--vendor

Print the vendor name(s) of the devices (e.g., 3Com Corporation).

--model

Print the model name(s) of the devices (e.g., 3c905C-TX [Fast Etherlink]).

--device

Print the device path(s) of the devices (e.g., /dev/hdc).

--module

Print the module name(s) of the devices (e.g., 3c59x).

--xserver

Print the X server name(s) of the devices (e.g., XFree86).

--xdriver

Print the X driver name(s) of the devices (e.g., ati).

-h, --help

Show summary of options.

-v, --version

Show version of program.

In version 1.x of discover, there is no supported mechanism for the individual site administrator to add data about hardware that discover does not already recognize. The unsupported method is to edit the .lst files in /usr/share/discover, however this approach has obvious limitations as /usr may be a read-only mounted filesystem, and any upgrade of the discover-data package will overwrite the hardware list files unless special steps are taken by the administrator.

It is, however, possible to report information to the authors for inclusion in a subsequent release of the discover-data package. The Debian utilities bug(1) and reportbug(1) are the best ways to make such a report. By far the most common requests are for unrecognized PCI and AGP devices. For such devices, please include the following information in your report:

PCI vendor ID

This information can be retrieved via the lspci(8) utility. Take note of lspci's -n flag, which reports the numerical value. Both the numeric ID and the string (if available) are required.

PCI model ID

As PCI vendor ID, above.

PCI device class

As PCI vendor ID, above.

name of corresponding kernel 2.4.26 module, if any

This is the name of the kernel module you would load with, e.g., modprobe(8) to support the device. If the device is a VGA-compatible display controller (PCI class 0300), report the XFree86 server information instead (see below).

name of X server binary, if any

If the device is a VGA-compatible display controller (PCI class 0300), report the name of the XFree86 server used with it. In most cases, this is the XFree86(1) X server, but it could be one of the version 3.x X servers such as XF86_SVGA(1) or XF86_S3(1).

name of X server driver module, if any

If the device is a VGA-compatible display controller (PCI class 0300), and the X server is XFree86(1), report the name of the video driver module used to drive the card, such as ati or nv.

Finally, include any notes or remarks you have about the hardware. The full output of /sbin/lspci and /sbin/lspci -n is always appreciated.

discover.conf(5),lspci(8).

Eric Gillespie, Jeff Licquia, Ian Murdock, and Branden Robinson for Progeny Linux Systems, Inc. and Debian GNU/Linux.

Based on detect by MandrakeSoft SA. Original authors include: Alexandre Dussart, Bernhard Rosenkraenzer, Felipe Rivera Marquez, Jamie Fifield, Philippe Chauvat, Andrew Post, Stefan Siegel, Dan Helfman, Balazs Scheidler, Christophe Romain, Eric Dumas, Michael Vogt, Pablo Saratxaga, and Martin Mares.