This package contains the PCI Utilities, version 2.1.10. Copyright (c) 1997--2002 Martin Mares 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 Getting new ID's ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The database of PCI ID's (the pci.ids file) gets out of date much faster than I release new versions of this package.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 libpci used on NetBSD 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 linux-pci@atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz (send "subscribe linux-pci" to majordomo@atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz). 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