I hate to say this but Linux software is not perfect. I know, I know, but nothing could possibly be wrong with openSUSE, right? Well, Linux and all the open source tools are created by people and since we are flawed, so are our creations. Sometimes, things can slip through the quality assurance process at openSUSE and however rare, they do happen.
The Problem
One of my problems that has shown it’s ugly head is an issue with the wifi driver. Sometimes, for whatever reason, it cannot authenticate. Another situation is, sometimes, you may have an issue passing a device to a Virtual Machine and it doesn’t come back quite right.
The Solution
In short, if you have a device on the PCI bus that needs to be removed and added again, there are some ways to do that. To get the PCI device ID, run:
/sbin/lspci
Take note of whatever your troublesome device is from here.
Method 1
echo "1" > /sys/bus/pci/devices/$NUMBER/reset
This should reset the device and have it behave, but as you may know from your experience in having used the original Nintendo Entertainment System, sometimes, it just isn’t good enough.
Example
echo "1" > /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000\:03\:00.0/reset
In my case, that will send the wifi network module to reset. It may or may not solve your issue.
Method 2
This one absolutely works. It is a bit more… brute force but it does indeed solve any issues I have.
echo "1" > /sys/bus/pci/devices/$NUMBER/removesleep 2
echo "1" > /sys/bus/pci/rescan
The sleep 2 is only necessary if you are copying and pasting into the terminal or creating a script. It is just a pause before it rescans the PCI bus. How I used it and I did create a script for this that I can invoke if I have problems.
Example
echo "1" > /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000\:03\:00.0/removesleep 2
echo "1" > /sys/bus/pci/rescan
Final Thoughts
Software isn’t perfect, I have historically had issues on more than one distribution with PCI devices requiring a reset. This method works with openSUSE Tumbleweed in the year 2019. If this should change, I will update this post.
References
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/73908/how-to-reset-cycle-power-to-a-pcie-device
One of the great things about Linux is that, even though it has flaws, it provides enough flexibility to the user that you can usually fix those flaws on your own.
That is very true! Since you have control, you can flick the switches when necessary.