Hardware inventory

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Hardware inventory provides a simple way of finding basic information about your installed hardware. Hardware includes processors, memory, serial ports, parallel ports, power supplies, fans, graphics adapters, network adapters, and SCSI and IDE devices such as disks.

Hardware inventory consists of several different commands that you can use to gather data about your hardware. This data can be viewed by you or accessed by higher-level serviceability tools.

The commands access the Vital Product Data (VPD) database. The default VPD is the /var/lib/lsvpd/vpd.db file. You can direct the commands to access other VPD files that contain previous hardware inventory databases that are replaced by the system.

Some systems feature dynamic VPD. The commands access the dynamic VPD only when started by the root user.

The utilities described here are supported in the following Linux® distributions and virtualized environments:

Table 1. Support for hardware inventory utilities
Utility	PowerVM® partition on any level of Power® processor
libvpd Library	All current versions of the following distributions: Red Hat Enterprise Linux SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
lscfg	All current versions of the following distributions: Red Hat Enterprise Linux SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
lsmcode	All current versions of the following distributions: Red Hat Enterprise Linux SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
lsvio	All current versions of the following distributions: Red Hat Enterprise Linux SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
lsvpd	All current versions of the following distributions: Red Hat Enterprise Linux SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Ubuntu
vpdupdate	All current versions of the following distributions: Red Hat Enterprise Linux SUSE Linux Enterprise Server

For Linux distributions currently supported on Power systems, see Linux on Power overview.

Hardware inventory commands are provided by the lsvpd package. The commands that are typically included are:

vpdupdate: Update the VPD database.
Note: The information that the other commands in the lsvpd package provide is correct only if the vpdupdate command is run after any changes are made to the system configuration. If you are unsure that any changes were made, run thevpdupdate command.
lscfg: List hardware configuration information for the system and its components.
lsmcode: List hardware microcode and firmware levels.
lsvio: List virtual I/O adapters and devices.
lsvpd: List VPD for the system and its components.

The commands that are provided by this package, and their features and usage, might vary by distribution and release. Consult the man pages on your system for the most accurate description of their features and usage. For more information about how to list and display the man pages for commands that are provided by this package, see Displaying package man pages.

For more information about the lsvpd package, see lsvpd: Utility to List Device Vital Product Data (VPD).