Helping a newbie list or troubleshoot their hardware

Sy Ali sy1234-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org
Sat May 19 12:56:51 UTC 2007


In order to expedite a person's installation and troubleshooting, I'm
wondering how we can have them learn about their particular setup.

* Learn if they meet minimum system requirements
* Learn if they may have hardware which isn't so Linux-friendly
* Provide a simple list of their hardware information
* Optionally provide a more complex breakdown of their hardware
information - to be sent to an advanced person for troubleshooting.

I'm not sure if such stuff is easy or is already done, so I'm going to
ramble on for a little bit.


Is there a Linux + Windows program which can scan hardware and:

* compare it to an already-provided configuration file and just tell
the person "yes you're ok" or "no, you only have x memory" ?

* view a local database or preferably connect with an online Linux
compatible database and just tell the user "all your hardware is
awesome" or "some people had problems with the video card you have,
here are some links and here are links to your own distro's docs on
that hardware..." ?

after having installed Linux:

* send their list of hardware to the linux compatible database
alongside their comments - i.e. to be able to easily update the
database with "hey, all my hardware seems to work - mouse, keyboard,
screen, nic, motherboard, video for non-3d, etc"

Or also, is there a program which can take their list of hardware and
perform specific tests to see if it all works? - i.e. if it sees a
webcam, it'll do some v4l magic and get them to test it quickly, and
then just fire off that report.


The real goal would be to have such functionality on a tiny LiveCD and
on a distro LiveCD either within the live distro itself or as its own
menu item like how memcheck86 or rescue distros are provided on many
liveCDs.

How lofty is this dream?
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