PCICTL(8) System Manager's Manual PCICTL(8)

pcictla program to manipulate the PCI bus

pcictl pcibus command [arg ...]

pcictl allows a user or system administrator to access various resources on a PCI bus. The pcibus argument names a special file for the PCI bus device. If the file name is relative, it's interpreted relative to the /dev directory, so e.g. plain ‘pci0’ refers to /dev/pci0.

The following commands are available:

[-Nn] [-b bus] [-d device] [-f function]
List the devices in the PCI domain, either as names or, if -n is given, as numbers.

If -N is given, the driver name for this PCI device will be listed if any driver is attached.

Any locator not specified defaults to a wildcard, or may be explicitly wildcarded by specifying ‘all’, or ‘any’.

The remaining commands operate on a single PCI device, the -d argument is mandatory. If the bus is not specified, it defaults to the bus number of the pcibus. If the function is not specified, it defaults to 0.

[-b bus] -d device [-f function]
Dump the PCI configuration space for the specified device.
[-b bus] -d device [-f function] register
Read the specified 32-bit aligned PCI configuration register and print it in hexadecimal to standard output.
[-b bus] -d device [-f function] register value
Write the specified value to the specified 32-bit aligned PCI configuration register.

/dev/pci*
PCI bus device nodes

This shows all PCI devices on the system:

pcictl pci0 list

This shows all PCI devices on the system, including attached drivers:

pcictl pci0 list -N

pci(3), pci(4), drvctl(8)

The pcictl command first appeared in NetBSD 1.6.

pcictl read and write are dangerous commands that can damage hardware and panic the operating system. They are meant as a diagnostic tool for experiments or to debug device drivers. Do not use them as substitutes for a device driver!

January 25, 2026 NetBSD 11.99