NVME-ID-CTRL(1) NVMe Manual NVME-ID-CTRL(1)

# [NAME](#NAME)

nvme-id-ctrl - Send NVMe Identify Controller, return result and structure

# [SYNOPSIS](#SYNOPSIS)

```
nvme [<global-options>] id ctrl <device>


                        [--vendor-specific | -V]


                        [--raw-binary | -b]
```

# [DESCRIPTION](#DESCRIPTION)

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

The &lt;device&gt; parameter is mandatory and may be either the NVMe character device (ex: /dev/nvme0), or a namespace block device (ex: /dev/nvme0n1).

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.

The bare *nvme id-ctrl* form (without a space) still works as a deprecated alias and will be removed in a future major version. New scripts should use *nvme id ctrl* instead.

# [OPTIONS](#OPTIONS)

-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.

# [GLOBAL OPTIONS](#GLOBAL_OPTIONS)

The following options are defined at the top-level nvme command and are available to this subcommand:

--dry-run

Print the command that would be executed, but do not actually execute it.

--no-ioctl-probing

Disable probing for 64-bit IOCTL support.

--no-retries

Disable retry logic on transient errors.

-o &lt;fmt&gt;, --output-format=&lt;fmt&gt;

Set the reporting format to *normal*, *tabular, 'json*, or *binary*. Only one output format may be used at a time.

--output-format-version=&lt;version&gt;

Select the output format version. Version *1* uses the original field naming, while version *2* (default) provides more consistent and script-friendly field names.

--timeout=&lt;ms&gt;

Set the timeout for the command in milliseconds.

-v, --verbose

Increase the level of detail in the output. May be specified multiple times to further increase verbosity.

These options can also be set as machine-wide defaults in [nvme-cli.conf(5)](/man/os/nvme-cli/nvme-cli.conf.5). A command-line flag always overrides the file.

# [EXAMPLES](#EXAMPLES)

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

```
# nvme id ctrl /dev/nvme0
```

•In addition to showing the known fields, has the program to display the vendor unique field:

```
# nvme id ctrl /dev/nvme0 --vendor-specific
# nvme id ctrl /dev/nvme0 -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 ctrl /dev/nvme0 --raw-binary > id_ctrl.raw
# nvme id ctrl /dev/nvme0 -b > id_ctrl.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 ctrl /dev/nvme0 --raw-binary | nvme_parse_id_ctrl
```

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_ctrl.c */
#include <linux/nvme.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <unistd.h>
int main(int argc, char **argv)
{


        unsigned char buf[sizeof(struct nvme_id_ctrl)];


        struct nvme_id_ctrl *ctrl = (struct nvme_id_ctrl *)buf;


        if (read(STDIN_FILENO, buf, sizeof(buf)))


                return 1;


        printf("vid   : %#x\n", ctrl->vid);


        printf("ssvid : %#x\n", ctrl->ssvid);


        return 0;
}
```

# [NVME](#NVME)

Part of the nvme-user suite

09/18/2026 NVMe

---

Document: nvme-id-ctrl(1) from nvme-cli 3.1-r0 (Chainguard OS)
Source: https://github.com/linux-nvme/nvme-cli