nvme-id-ns(1)

# nvme-id-ns(1) Manual Page

## NAME

nvme-id-ns - Send NVMe Identify Namespace, return result and structure

## SYNOPSIS

    nvme id-ns <device> [-v | --vendor-specific] [-b | --raw-binary]
                        [--namespace-id=<nsid> | -n <nsid>]

## DESCRIPTION

For the NVMe device given, sends an identify namespace command and provides the result and returned structure.

The <device> parameter is mandatory and may be either the NVMe character device (ex: /dev/nvme0), or a namespace block device (ex: /dev/nvme0n1). If the character device is given, the `'--namespace-id'` option is mandatory, otherwise it will use the ns-id of the namespace for the block device you opened. For block devices, the ns-id used can be overridden with the same option.

On success, the structure may be returned in one of several ways depending on the option flags; the structure may be parsed by the program or the raw buffer may be printed to stdout.

## OPTIONS

-n <nsid>
--namespace-id=<nsid>

  Retrieve the identify namespace structure for the given nsid. This is required for the character devices, or overrides the block nsid if given.

-b
--raw-binary

  Print the raw buffer to stdout. Structure is not parsed by program. This overrides the vendor specific and human readable options.

-v
--vendor-specific

  In addition to parsing known fields, this option will dump the vendor specific region of the structure in hex with ascii interpretation.

-H
--human-readable

  This option will parse and format many of the bit fields into human-readable formats.

## EXAMPLES

- Has the program interpret the returned buffer and display the known fields in a human readable format:

      # nvme id-ns /dev/nvme0n1

- If using the character device or overriding namespace id:

      # nvme id-ns /dev/nvme0 -n 1
      # nvme id-ns /dev/nvme0n1 -n 1
      # nvme id-ns /dev/nvme0 --namespace-id=1

- In addition to showing the known fields, have the program to display the vendor unique field:

      # nvme id-ns /dev/nvme0n1 --vendor-specific
      # nvme id-ns /dev/nvme0n1 -v

  The above will dump the 'vs' buffer in hex since it doesn’t know how to interpret it.

- Have the program return the raw structure in binary:

      # nvme id-ns /dev/nvme0n1 --raw-binary > id_ns.raw
      # nvme id-ns /dev/nvme0n1 -b > id_ns.raw

  It is probably a bad idea to not redirect stdout when using this mode.

- Alternatively you may want to send the data to another program that can parse the raw buffer.

      # nvme id-ns /dev/nvme0n1 --raw-binary | nvme_parse_id_ns

  The parse program in the above example can be a program that shows the structure in a way you like. The following program is such an example that will parse it and can accept the output through a pipe, `'|'`, as shown in the above example, or you can `'cat'` a saved output buffer to it.

    /* File: nvme_parse_id_ns.c */

    #include <linux/nvme.h>
    #include <stdio.h>
    #include <unistd.h>

    int main(int argc, char **argv)
    {
            unsigned char buf[sizeof(struct nvme_id_ns)];
            struct nvme_id_ns *ns = (struct nvme_id_ns *)buf;

            if (read(STDIN_FILENO, buf, sizeof(buf)))
                    return 1;

            printf("nsze : %#llx\n", ns->nsze);
            printf("ncap : %#llx\n", ns->ncap);
            return 0;
    }

## NVME

Part of the nvme-user suite