checking hardware type automatically

[Juri Jensen]

Roland Thomas Lichti wrote:
> 
> Hi all!
> 
> On Wed, 08 Aug 2001, Matthew Palmer wrote:
> 
> > > > That's why you don't use 2.2 kernels.  2.4 is much nicer.
> > > And buggier. So far 2.4 is not going to be the default kernel for debian
> > > 3.0.
> > Yergh.
> 
> Well, using FAI i had the "nice" situation of installing a server with
> 2.4 and reiserfs. After rebooting the reiserfs paniced all the time in a
> routine only to be called with "enhanced checking" - but I don't use
> this kernel option. We decided now to stay with 2.2 and ext2 for the
> next couple of months  ...
> 
> > No, but they often are - the only device without a revision on the mobo on
> > this box is the 10Mb ethernet card (RTL8029 if you're interested).  Also,
> > they might be the same class and manufacturer, but a different model, as
> > distinguished by the number after the colon in the device ID (the yyyy in
> > Class zzzz: xxxx:yyyy)
> 
> > > But you are right. Using the company id's from the MAC and a more detailed
> > > lspci -n probably gives Roland more possibilities to distinguish his
> > > hardware "out-of-the-box".
> 
> Well, since all of our NICs are INTEL cards :-)))). I know do a
> heuristic check over different combinations of pci cards. "If it is a
> ServerWorks PCI bridge and it has an ADAPTEC or AMI RAID, then it has to
> be a ... but if it has a GDTH raid, it has to be a ... - otherwise if it
> has an INTEL pci bridge it has to be a ..." - not very nice, but it does
> the trick.
> 
> next stage is a configuration server:
> 
> on the server I configure:
> 
> - Server type "web" with 2 cpus, 1 gig memory, at least 20 gig
>   harddisk and from manufacturer "XYZ".
>   hostname, networking data, and so on
> 
> - Server type "db" with 2 cpus, 4 gig memory, 70 gig harddisk and
>   manufacturer "AAAA"
>   hostname, networking data, and so on
> 
> And now the classes send a http request to the configuration server
> stating their configuration. The server checks against the database,
> marks the configuration as used (using the MAC ;-) and sends back an
> configuration file with the whole configuration data which is now
> configured on the system.
> 
> So when one of our project managers come with nine servers that "have to
> be installed by tomorrow" - no problem, just a few keystrokes on the
> configuration server, switching on all the systems and on they go ...
> 
> (and without any action they got inserted into our IRM-based
> hardwaretracking system :-)
> 
> Anyone interested? If so I ask my employer if I'm allowed to do this
> GPL'ed :-).

This sounds really interesting... I'd really like that to be GPL'ed...

> 
> bye,
>         Roland