Vital Product Data (VPD) could be a assortment of configuration and informational information related to a selected set of hardware or software. Very important product information (VPD) stores info like half numbers, serial numbers, and engineering modification levels. Not all devices hooked up to a system can offer VPD, however it's typically accessible from PCI and SCSI devices. ATA and USB devices additionally offer similar information, however don't consult with it as VPD.
In AIX, VPD additionally refers to a subset of database tables within the Object information Manager (ODM) obtained from either the Customized VPD object category or platform specific areas, thus the VPD and ODM terms are generally brought up interchangeably. Lscfg command will be employed in AIX to urge the VPD.
In Linux, the commands `vpddecode', `biosdecode', and `dmidecode' will be used to look at hardware the very important Product information.
VPD information is usually burned onto EEPROM's related to numerous hardware parts, or will be queried through hooked up I2C buses. It’s employed by firmware to see the character of the system hardware and to protect the operation of the firmware from minor changes and variations of hardware implementations among a given machine model range.
Object information Manager
Object information Manager (ODM) could be a database management system and device configuration integrated into IBM's AIX operating system. The ODM is exclusive to AIX compared to alternative UNIX operating systems. Information being managed by ODM is stored and maintained as objects with associated attributes. Interaction of C programming language applications with ODM is performed via application programming interface (API) library shell scripts and users are given command-line utilities such us odmshow, odmadd, odmchange and odmdelete to trot out it.
Examples of data stored within the ODM database are:
* Network configuration
* Logical volume management configuration
* put in software info
* Devices that AIX has drivers for
* Logical devices or software drivers
* Physical hardware device put in
* Menus, screens and commands that SMIT uses
Device driver
In computing software driver could be a Trojan horse permitting higher-level pc programs to interact with a hardware device.
A driver generally communicates with the device through the pc bus or communications subsystem to that the hardware connects. When a calling program invokes a routine within the driver, the driving force problems commands to the device. Once the device sends information back to the driving force, the driving force might invoke routines within the original calling program. Drivers are hardware-dependent and operating-system-specific. They typically offer the interrupt handling needed for any necessary asynchronous time-dependent hardware interface.
A device driver simplifies programming by acting as translator between a hardware device and also the applications or operating systems that use it. Programmers will write the higher-level application code independently of no matter specific hardware device.
Virtual Device Drivers
Virtual device drivers represent a selected variant of device drivers. They’re used to emulate a hardware device, notably in virtualization environments, as an example when a DOS program is run on a Microsoft Windows pc or when a guest operating system is run on, as an example, a Xen host. Rather than enabling the guest operating system to dialog with hardware, virtual device drivers take the alternative role and emulate a chunk of hardware, so the guest operating system and its drivers running within a virtual machine will have the illusion of accessing real hardware. Tries by the guest operating system to access the hardware are routed to the virtual device driver within the host operating system as e.g. operate calls. The virtual device driver can even send simulated processor-level events like interrupts into the virtual machine.
Virtual devices may additionally operate in very non-virtualized surroundings. As an example a virtual network adapter is employed with a virtual non-public network, whereas a virtual disk device is employed with ISCSI. The simplest example for virtual device drivers will be "Daemon Tools"
Identifiers
A device on the PCI or USB bus is identified by 2 ID's that accommodates four numbers and/or letters A to F. the seller ID identifies the seller of the device. The device ID identifies a selected device from that manufacturer/vendor.
A PCI device has typically an ID combine for the most chip of the device, and additionally a subsystem ID combine that identifies the seller, which can vary from the chip manufacturer.
Printer Driver
Printer driver could be a piece of software that converts the information to be printed to the shape specific to a printer. The aim of printer drivers is to permit applications to try to printing while not being attentive to the technical details of every printer model.
Printer drivers mustn't be confused with print spoolers that queue print jobs and send them successively to a printer. |
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