You are filing a hardware bug report and the maintainer asks for the raw PCI vendor and device ID numbers rather than the human-readable names lspci normally prints. Which lspci option produces the numeric IDs?
LPIC-1 Exam 101-500, objective 101. System architecture medium
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How these questions are written — where each question comes from, what the verification ledger records, and what happens when one is found wrong.
The options
Not correct -t
Wrong. -t draws a tree diagram of the buses, bridges and devices, showing the topology rather than any identifier detail.
Not correct -k
Wrong, though useful: -k shows the kernel driver currently in use for each device and the kernel modules that claim to support it.
Correct -n
Correct. -n suppresses the lookup in the PCI ID database and prints numeric vendor:device identifiers, which is exactly what a driver maintainer needs. (-nn prints both the number and the name.)
Not correct -s
Wrong. -s takes a slot specification such as -s 00:1f.3 and restricts the output to devices at that address; it changes which devices are shown, not how IDs are printed.
Why
lspci translates the numeric vendor and device IDs into names using a local PCI ID database. -n turns that translation off and shows the numbers, and -nn shows both. Those numbers are what identifies the chipset unambiguously when the name lookup is missing or misleading. lsusb has the same -v/-t style options for the USB bus.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- LPI exam objective 101.1
- What it says
- Using tools that report the devices present on the PCI and USB buses.
Practise this
Reading one question is not practice. The trainer will draw a short set from objective 101 and space the ones you get wrong.
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