Last Updated on September 30, 2010 by Dave Farquhar
A question came up in the comments of one of my past entries that raised a good question: When you can’t get a device to work, how do you determine which kernel module (Unix-speak that roughly translates to “device driver”) to use to get the hardware working?
Linux has a virtual file at /proc/pci that lists every PCI device it finds in the system. So you can just more /proc/pci to page through a system inventory and find out what video card, NIC, motherboard chipset, IDE and/or SCSI controller, and other devices are in the system.
If you’re in the process of installing when you need this information (highly likely), use ALT-F2 to get to a text console–or CTRL-ALT-F2 to get to a text console from a GUI installer–and issue the commands.
To get back to your installer, hit ALT-F1 to get back to a text-based installer, or CTRL-ALT-F7 to get back to a GUI installer. If CTRL-ALT-F7 doesn’t get you back to the GUI, try the other CTRL-ALT-function combinations.
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.