BIOSDEVNAME(1) General Commands Manual BIOSDEVNAME(1)

NAME
       biosdevname - give BIOS-given name of a device

SYNOPSIS
       biosdevname [options] [args]...

DESCRIPTION
       biosdevname  takes a kernel device name as an argument, and returns the
       BIOS-given name it "should" be.

OPTIONS
       -i, interface
              Treat [args] as ethernet devs

       -d, debug
              Enable debugging

       -p, policy [physical|allethN]

       -P, prefix [string]
              string use for embedded NICs in the physical policy (default=em)

       -x, nopirq
              Do not use $PIR table for mapping PCI device to slot. Some  BIOS
              have incorrect values.

       -s, smbios [x.y]
              Require minimum SMBIOS version x.y

POLICIES
       The  physical  policy  is  the current default.  However, when invoking
       biosdevname in udev rules, one should always  specify  the  policy  you
       want, as the default has changed over time.
       The physical policy uses the following scheme:

       em[]
              for embedded NICs

       pp[]
              for cards in PCI slots

       The    allethN  policy  makes  a  best  guess at what the device order
              should be, with embedded devices first, PCI cards  in  ascending
              slot order, and ports in ascending PCI bus/device/function order
              breadth-first.  However, this policy does not work if  your  PCI
              devices  are hot-plugged or hot-pluggable, including the virtual
              functions on an SR-IOV device.  In  a  hot-plug  scenario,  each
              separate  udev  instance  will be invoked in parallel, while the
              device tree is still being populated  with  new  devices.   Each
              udev  instance  will  see  a different PCI tree, and thus cannot
              provide consistent enumeration.  Use of this  policy  should  be
              limited  to  only scenarios where all PCI devices are present at
              boot (cold-plug).


EXIT CODES
       Returns 0 on success, with BIOS-suggested name printed to stdout.
       Returns 1 on provided device name lookup failure.
       Returns 2 if system BIOS does not provide naming information.  biosdev‐
       name  requires  system  BIOS  to provide naming information, either via
       SMBIOS or sysfs files.
       Returns 3 if not run as root but requires root privileges.
       Returns 4 if running in a virtual machine.


SEE ALSO
       http://linux.dell.com/wiki/index.php/Oss/libnetdevname
       http://linux.dell.com/files/biosdevname/
       git://linux.dell.com/biosdevname.git


RELATED PROGRAMS
       The dmidecode package contains two tools useful for debugging BIOS fea‐
       tures  that biosdevname uses, specifically dmidecode to read the SMBIOS
       Type 9 and Type 41 tables, and biosdecode to read the PCI  IRQ  Routing
       Table.   Please include the output of each of these programs in any bug
       reports.

AUTHOR
       biosdevname was written by  Matt Domsch 

       This manual page was written by Rudy  Gevaert  ,
       for the Debian project (but may be used by others).



                                 Nov 28, 2010                   BIOSDEVNAME(1)