Finding IDs to submit

I have written a lot about the hardware IDs but i haven’t said much about submitting new entries to the upstream databases. Indeed, the package just mirrors the data that is collected by the USB and PCI databases that are managed by Stephen, Martin and Michal.

As an example, I’ll show you how I’ve been submitting the so-called Subsystem IDs for PCI devices from computers I either own, or fix up for customers and friends.

First off, you have to find a system or device whose subsystem IDs have not been submitted yet. Unfortunately I don’t have any computer at hand that I haven’t submitted to the database already. But fear not — it so happens I had an interesting opening. I rented a server from OVH recently, as I’ve had some trouble with one of my production hosts lately, and I’m entertaining the idea of moving everything on a new server and service altogether. But the whole thing is a topic for a completely different time. In any case, let’s see what we can do about these IDs now that I have an interesting system at hand.

First of all, while I don’t have the server at hand to know what’s in it, OVH does tell me what hardware is on it — in particular they tell me it’s an Intel D425KT board (yes I got a Kimsufi Atom, I got the three months lease for now and I’ll see if it can perform decently enough), so that’s a start. Alternatively, I could have asked dmidecode — but I just don’t have it installed on that server right now.

First step is to look at what lspci -v says:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Atom Processor D4xx/D5xx/N4xx/N5xx DMI Bridge
        Subsystem: Intel Corporation Device 544b
        Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0
        Capabilities: [e0] Vendor Specific Information: Len=08 <?>

This is of course only the first entry in the list but it’s still something. You can see on the second line that it says “Subsystem: Intel Corporation Device 544b” — that means that it knows the subsystem vendor (ID 8086, I can tell you by heart — they have been funny at that), but it doesn’t know the subsystem device. So it’s what we’re looking for: an unknown system! Time to compare the output of lspci -vn — that one does not resolve the IDs, since we’ll need them to submit to the PCI database so if you’re not registered already, do register so that they can be submitted to begin with.

00:00.0 0600: 8086:a000
        Subsystem: 8086:544b
        Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0
        Capabilities: [e0] Vendor Specific Information: Len=08 <?>

Okay so now we know that our first device is Intel’s (VID 8086) and has a000 as device ID — this brings us to https://pci-ids.ucw.cz/read/PC/8086/a000 easy, isn’t it? At the end of the page there’s a list of the known subsystem IDs; pending submissions does not show up the name, but they show up in the table with a darker gray background. All PCI ID entries are moderated by hand by the database’ s maintainers. When you’ll be reading this, the entry for my board will be in already, but right now it isn’t — if it wasn’t obvious, I’m looking for an entry that reads 8086 544b (which is under “Subsystem” above).

Now the form requires just a few words: the ID itself – which is 8086 544b with a space, not a colon – and a name. Note is for something that needs to be written on the pci.ids, so in most cases need to be empty. Discussion if when you wan tot comment on the certainly of your submission; for my laptop for instance we had some trouble with “Intel Corporation Device 0153” — which is now officially “3rd Gen Core Processor Thermal Subsystem”.

The name I’m going to submit is “Desktop Board D425KT” as that’s what the other entry in the database for that device uses as a format — okay it actually uses DeskTop but I’d rather not capitalize another T and see a kitten cry.

Now it’s time to go through all the other entries in the system — yes there are many of them, and most of the time the IDs are not set in the order of the PCI connections, so be careful. More interestingly, not all the subsystems are going to be listed in the same line. Indeed, the third entry that I have is this:

00:1c.0 0604: 8086:27d0 (rev 01) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
        Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0
        Bus: primary=00, secondary=01, subordinate=01, sec-latency=0
        I/O behind bridge: 00001000-00001fff
        Memory behind bridge: e0f00000-e12fffff
        Prefetchable memory behind bridge: 00000000e0000000-00000000e00fffff
        Capabilities: [40] Express Root Port (Slot+), MSI 00
        Capabilities: [80] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit-
        Capabilities: [90] Subsystem: 8086:544b
        Capabilities: [a0] Power Management version 2
        Capabilities: [100] Virtual Channel
        Capabilities: [180] Root Complex Link
        Kernel driver in use: pcieport

The subsystem ID is listed under “Capabilities” instead — but it’s always the same. This is actually critical: if the subsystem does not match, it means that it’s coming from a different component — for instance if you’re building your own computer, the subsystem of the internal CPU devices and those of the motherboard will not match, as they come from different vendors. And so would happen to add-on cards (PCI, PCI-E, AGP, …).

Sometimes, a different subsystem is also available on internal components that get different names from the motherboard itself — in this case, the Realtek network card on this motherboard reports a completely different ID and I really don’t know how to submit it:

01:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller (rev 05)
        Subsystem: Intel Corporation Device d626
        Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 44
        I/O ports at 1000 [size=256]
        Memory at e0004000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=4K]
        Memory at e0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=16K]
        Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 3
        Capabilities: [50] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+
        Capabilities: [70] Express Endpoint, MSI 01
        Capabilities: [b0] MSI-X: Enable- Count=4 Masked-
        Capabilities: [d0] Vital Product Data
        Capabilities: [100] Advanced Error Reporting
        Capabilities: [140] Virtual Channel
        Capabilities: [160] Device Serial Number 01-00-00-00-36-4c-e0-00
        Kernel driver in use: r8169

If for whatever reason you make a mistake, you can click on the “Discuss” link on the submitted content and edit the name that you want to submit. I did make such a mistake during submitting the IDs for this.

So here are the tricks.. happy submission!