Which command lists NVIDIA devices on the PCIe bus, even without a driver?
Why C is the answer
lspci
lspci reads the bus, and nvidia-smi needs a working driver.
In detail
- lspci reads the bus, while nvidia-smi needs a working driver.
- nvidia-smi needs a working driver.
Use case
An illustrative scenario, not a real incident.
The driver is not installed yet, so lspci is used to confirm that the GPUs are on the bus.
See it in different ways
sequenceDiagram participant F as Facility participant B as BMC participant W as Firmware participant O as OS and drivers F->>B: Power and network B->>W: Update through out-of-band access W->>O: Install the OS and drivers O->>O: Confirm GPUs, then run diagnostics
flowchart TD
Q{"Which command?"}
Q -->|"No driver"| A0["lspci"]
Q -->|"Driver working"| A1["nvidia-smi"]Key point: lspci works without a driver.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. ibstat
- That shows network ports.
- B. sinfo
- That shows Slurm nodes.
- D. nvidia-smi
- That needs a driver.