Re: [gentoo-user] Re: video driver discovery

[Alan McKinnon]

On Tuesday 23 December 2008 03:28:55 James wrote:
> Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon <at> gmail.com> writes:
> > grepping a log file is the most natural way for an experienced unix admin
> > to do it. It's a useful skill, all newbies should be encouraged (but not
> > required) to learn it. Sometimes we experienced admin types lose sight of
> > the fact that regardless of all the nice new user-friendly aspects of
> > Linux being driven by distros like Ubuntu, under the covers we still have
> > a hard-core Unix system.
>
> hmmmm,
>
> Look at lspci -v. It lists quite a few kernel drivers....

I'm not sure I follow you. lspci lists physical hardware devices found while 
enumerating the pci bus, with -v it lists the kernel driver loaded for 
accessing that device.

Weren't you looking for the X video driver? You won't find that in lspci, it's 
a user-space driver loaded by the X server. You may well find information 
related to 3D rendering and frame buffers though.

Another thing that people all too easily lose sight of is that if someone 
wants such information as which X driver is loaded, then we assume that the 
person knows enough about the system to know where to look and knows the 
usual tools for looking there. In much the same way as we expect the car 
mechanic to know where the spark plugs are and what they do.

> 00:05.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS480 PCI Bridge (prog-if 00
> [Normal decode])
> <snip>
> Kernel driver in use: pcieport-drive
>
> and here:
> 00:12.0 IDE interface: ATI Technologies Inc 4379 Serial ATA Controller
> (prog-if 8f [Master SecP SecO PriP PriO])
> <snip>
> Kernel driver in use: sata_sil
>
> and so on...
> 00:13.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 USB Host Controller
> (prog-if 10 [OHCI])
> Kernel driver in use: ohci_hcd
>
> 00:14.0 SMBus: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 SMBus Controller (rev 11)
>
> Kernel driver in use: piix4_smbus
>
>
> I guess that was done just for lazy(slow) admins.....?
>
>
> common, it's an obviously an oversight, cause lots of other
> things get listed.........you think? Maybe it'd be too
> difficult to do?

Remind me again, what point are you making? lspci is a very low-level hardware 
detection tool. It's not supposed to be friendly, it's supposed to be 
complete.

-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com