LSDEV(8)

💖 LSDEV 💖 — the lsdev(8) page, but make it make sense

okay so bestie, welcome to the Linux System Manual entry for lsdev, section 8 (that's the sysadmin section, iykyk 👑). this little cutie tells you what hardware is living inside your computer. let's get into it ✨

🌸 NAME 🌸

lsdev — display information about installed hardware

like literally it just shows you your hardware. that's the whole job. and it ate 💅

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

lsdev

that's it. that's the whole invocation. no flags, no arguments, no drama. main character energy fr fr 🎀

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

so here's the vibe: lsdev goes snooping through the interrupts, ioports and dma files in the /proc directory to gather up info about all the hardware installed on your machine. 🕵️‍♀️

and what you get back is a quick lil overview of which hardware is using what I/O addresses, and which IRQ and DMA channels are getting claimed. lowkey super useful when you're trying to figure out who's hogging what. 🔥

💅 OPTIONS 💅

• None. — there are zero options. no flags. nothing. she simply does not have them, and honestly? iconic. 🙈

🍓 FILES 🍓

• /proc/interrupts — IRQ channels. that's where the interrupt tea lives ☕
• /proc/ioports — I/O memory addresses. the port gossip 💜
• /proc/dma — DMA channels. the DMA section, as promised 🌈

💀 BUGS 💀

ngl, there are some quirks and we're gonna be honest about them:

• lsdev can't always figure out which lines in those three files refer to one and the same device, because those files sometimes use different names for the same piece of hardware. 😭 like, in some kernels the keyboard gets called kbd in /proc/ioports and keyboard in /proc/interrupts. messy behaviour, honestly.
  • and the official stance is: this should be fixed in the kernel, not in lsdev (and as it happens, that did actually get fixed for this particular example — slay for the kernel I guess 🫶).
• the program does try to match lines though — it strips anything after a space or an open parenthesis from the name, so that for example the serial lines from /proc/interrupts match up with the serial(set) lines from /proc/ioports. cute, right?
  • > but fair warning: this attempt at DWIM ("do what I mean") might itself be considered a bug. so like, take it with a grain of salt bestie 😬
• and the big one: this program only shows the kernel's idea of what hardware is present, not what's actually physically available. the kernel is giving you its perception, not the objective truth. vibe check accordingly. 💀

🔥 SEE ALSO 🔥

• procinfo(8). go read that one too, it's giving sibling energy 🌸

🎀 AUTHOR 🎀

Sander van Malssen <svm@kozmix.cistron.nl> — thank you for your service, legend 👑

and that's the whole page!! 3rd Release, dated 1998-05-31, which means this manual page is older than most of us and still out here being useful. periodt. 💖✨🦋