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You are here: Home Docs Help! Reference Manuals Debian Reference Debian System installation hints General Linux system installation hints Determining a PC's hardware via Debian

3.1.3. Determining a PC's hardware via Debian

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The following commands on a Linux system should give some idea of actual hardware and configuration.

     $ pager /proc/pci
     $ pager /proc/interrupts
     $ pager /proc/ioports
     $ pager /proc/bus/usb/devices

These commands can be run during the install process from the console screen by pressing Alt-F2.

After the initial installation, with the installation of optional packages such as pciutils, usbutils, and lshw, you can obtain more extensive system information.

     $ lspci -v |pager
     $ lsusb -v |pager
     # lshw  |pager

Typical uses of interrupts:

  • IRQ0: timer output (8254)

  • IRQ1: keyboard controller

  • IRQ2: cascade to IRQ8–IRQ15 on PC-AT

  • IRQ3: secondary serial port (io-port=0x2F8) (/dev/ttyS1)

  • IRQ4: primary serial port (io-port=0x3F8) (/dev/ttyS0)

  • IRQ5: free [sound card (SB16: io-port=0x220, DMA-low=1, DMA-high=5)]

  • IRQ6: floppy disk controller (io-port=0x3F0) (/dev/fd0, /dev/fd1)

  • IRQ7: parport (io-port=0x378) (/dev/lp0)

  • IRQ8: rtc

  • IRQ9: software interrupt (int 0x0A), redirect to IRQ2

  • IRQ10: free [network interface card (NE2000: io-port=0x300)]

  • IRQ11: free [(SB16-SCSI: io-port=0x340, SB16-IDE: io-port=0x1E8,0x3EE)]

  • IRQ12: PS/2 Mouse

  • IRQ13: free (was 80287 math coprocessor)

  • IRQ14: primary IDE controller (/dev/hda, /dev/hdb)

  • IRQ15: secondary IDE controller (/dev/hdc, /dev/hdd)

For old non-PnP ISA cards, you may want to set IRQ5, IRQ10, and IRQ11 as non-PnP from the BIOS.

For USB devices, device classes are listed in /proc/bus/usb/devices as Cls=nn:

  • Cls=00 : Unused

  • Cls=01 : Audio (speaker etc.)

  • Cls=02 : Communication (MODEM, NIC, ...)

  • Cls=03 : HID (Human Interface Device: KB, mouse, joystick)

  • Cls=07 : Printer

  • Cls=08 : Mass storage (FDD, CD/DVD drive, HDD, Flash, ...)

  • Cls=09 : Hub (USB hub)

  • Cls=255 : Vendor specific

If the device class of a device is not 255, Linux supports the device.

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