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How can I know what these unknown devices are? I want to test other distros, but I don't know if they will have the same drivers, so I want to know what device may not work on another distro.

Additional Drivers tab on Software & Updates showing unknown devices using a certain driver

Raffa
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m26a
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    Look into the output of lspci -k or even lspci -vv and sudo lshw to list devices and their drivers ... Also ls -l /sys/dev/*/*/device/driver can be helpful. – Raffa Jan 19 '24 at 16:26

1 Answers1

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You'll need to dig a bit and manually inspect those given you use the right tools the right way ... I can think of two ways that are user friendly(ish) to list enough information for you to identify those devices ...

One way

Note the ubuntu-drivers tool is specific to Ubuntu and may not apply on other Linux distributions ...

ubuntu-drivers list

... will list those drivers ... and:

ubuntu-drivers debug

... will show debug information including devices using those drivers ... So, you can combine the two like:

ubuntu-drivers debug | grep "$(ubuntu-drivers list 2>/dev/null)"

... to limit the debug output to lines containing those drivers.

From the above, you'll get info like:

oem-somerville-meta: installed: 20.04ubuntu9 available: 20.04ubuntu9 (auto-install) [third party] free modalias: dmi:bvnDellInc.:bvr1.20.0:bd11/14/2023:br1.20:svnDellInc.:pnVostro3520:pvr:rvnDellInc.:rn0FF2R6:rvrA00:cvnDellInc.:ct10:cvr:sku0B94: path: /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id

... where path: /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id leads to your BIOS chip interface and you can query it in many ways including for example:

udevadm info --attribute-walk --path='/sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id'

Or, you'll get info like:

oem-somerville-olly-adl-meta: installed: 20.04ubuntu8 available: 20.04ubuntu8 (auto-install) [third party] free modalias: pci:v00008086d000051A3sv00001028sd00000B94bc0Csc05i00 path: /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1f.4 vendor: Intel Corporation

... where path: /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1f.4 indicates that this device lives in a certain address 0000:00:1f.4 at the pci0000:00 interface and thus a PCI device that can be queried with lspci like so:

lspci -vv -s '0000:00:1f.4'

Another way

... which is rather more extensive but still user friendly and portable is using lshw -html like so:

sudo lshw -html > /tmp/hwout.html && xdg-open /tmp/hwout.html

... look for driver=... under the configuration: sub section of each device in order to identify devices using those drivers.

Raffa
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  • It does give me more information, but I still can't figure out what these devices are. – m26a Jan 19 '24 at 22:48
  • oem-somerville-meta: installed: 20.04ubuntu9 available: 20.04ubuntu9 (auto-install) [third party] free modalias: dmi:bvnDellInc.:bvr1.20.0:bd11/14/2023:br1.20:svnDellInc.:pnVostro3520:pvr:rvnDellInc.:rn0FF2R6:rvrA00:cvnDellInc.:ct10:cvr:sku0B94: path: /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id – m26a Jan 19 '24 at 22:49
  • oem-somerville-olly-adl-meta: installed: 20.04ubuntu8 available: 20.04ubuntu8 (auto-install) [third party] free modalias: pci:v00008086d000051A3sv00001028sd00000B94bc0Csc05i00 path: /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1f.4 vendor: Intel Corporation – m26a Jan 19 '24 at 22:50
  • @m26a For the first one, it's your BIOS chip interface and can be queried with udevadm info --attribute-walk --path='/sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id' ... And for the second one, investigate more with lspci -vv -s '0000:00:1f.4' – Raffa Jan 20 '24 at 08:37
  • 0000:00:1f.4 SMBus: Intel Corporation Device 51a3 (rev 01) Subsystem: Dell Device 0b94 Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster- SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx- Status: Cap- 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- SERR- <PERR- INTx- Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 16 Region 0: Memory at 6003238000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256] Region 4: I/O ports at efa0 [size=32] Kernel driver in use: i801_smbus Kernel modules: i2c_i801 – m26a Jan 20 '24 at 13:19
  • I guess the SMBus is this? "SMBus is the System Management Bus used in personal computers and servers for low-speed, system management communications. A SMBus controller is integrated into most Intel® chipsets." – m26a Jan 20 '24 at 13:20
  • Do you know if I will get in much trouble if I don't have a driver for these two devices? – m26a Jan 20 '24 at 13:20
  • @m26a "Much trouble" is not usual but, trouble is expected and especially in power management related as incomplete support for SMBus devices can break communication and that can be serious sometimes ... See an in-detail discussion of one of SMBus's usage cases in my answer here: https://askubuntu.com/a/1406221 ... You can experiment with disabling those drivers one by one to see what might happen but, in general those drivers should have made their way to official Ubuntu repositories for a strongly good reason AFAIK. – Raffa Jan 20 '24 at 13:42
  • Thank you. When I installed Ubuntu Unity 23.10 I think I didn't see those devices on that tab. I'm not sure if it means they weren't being used at all or if they were just not using an alternative driver. I guess I can install the other distro and check if the device is present with the commands you showed me. – m26a Jan 20 '24 at 14:01