Maintaining mainboard status has been a pain in the neck from the beginning, and as the number of mainboards has grown it has gotten harder and harder.
Here is what I would like to do: for each src/mainboard/<vendor>/<board>, e.g. src/mainboard/tyan/guiness, I want to have a file called STATUS. In this file are keyword-value pairs describing the state of the mainboard. Each night at midnight we'll have a cron job collate this information and produce a web page.
Mainboards will have owners responsible for letting us know if the board is working, and what the most recent good build time was. This information will be display on the web page.
The file would look something like this:
# These are keyword-value pairs. # a : separates the keyword from the value # the value is arbitrary text delimited by newline. # continuation, if needed, will be via the \ at the end of a line # comments are indicated by a '#' as the first character. # the keywords are case-INSENSITIVE owner: Ron Minnich email: rminnich@lanl.gov #status: One of unsupported, unstable, stable status: unstable # Last-known-good follows the internationl date standard: day/month/year last-known-good: 0/0/0000 Comments: Great mainboard for a dashboard radio
Rather than have a single file with all the status, I want to have separate files for each mainboard so the various committers can work on their STATUS file without worrying about stomping on each other.
Comments? Are there fields missing? Is there a fundamental problem with this idea that I'm missing?
Thanks
ron
Hi Ron,
On Thu, Oct 17, 2002, Ronald G Minnich wrote:
Here is what I would like to do: for each src/mainboard/<vendor>/<board>, e.g. src/mainboard/tyan/guiness, I want to have a file called STATUS. In this file are keyword-value pairs describing the state of the mainboard. Each night at midnight we'll have a cron job collate this information and produce a web page.
Sounds great...
Mainboards will have owners responsible for letting us know if the board is working, and what the most recent good build time was. This information will be display on the web page.
<snip>
Comments? Are there fields missing? Is there a fundamental problem with this idea that I'm missing?
I'd add something like a "reason" field or "explanation" field to provide info to the "status" line (unless you feel this is amply covered in the "comments" field, though I interpreted that to be more generic than commenting directly on the "status" line). This could be something like:
"Serverworks won't provide any chipset specs w/o NDA, and doesn't respond to contacts with NDA, so support is unlikely for the future"
"e7500 supported, except for serial console"
"sis740 support is currently minimal, but growing quickly due to great help of sis-employee Ollie"
(Above are all just made-up examples, incidentally.)
Don't know if this suggestion helps...
Take care, Daniel
PS I am actually interested in LinuxBIOS support for Sis740 (featured on nice SFF Shuttle S40G). Wondering if anyone else is pursueing such?
On Thu, 17 Oct 2002, Daniel Freedman wrote:
I'd add something like a "reason" field or "explanation" field to provide info to the "status" line (unless you feel this is amply covered in the "comments" field, though I interpreted that to be more generic than commenting directly on the "status" line). This could be something like:
I'm adding it as "explanation". Good idea.
Thanks
ron
On Thu, 17 Oct 2002, Daniel Freedman wrote:
PS I am actually interested in LinuxBIOS support for Sis740 (featured on nice SFF Shuttle S40G). Wondering if anyone else is pursueing such?
Ollie ? :-)
ron
The file would look something like this:
# These are keyword-value pairs. # a : separates the keyword from the value # the value is arbitrary text delimited by newline. # continuation, if needed, will be via the \ at the end of a line # comments are indicated by a '#' as the first character. # the keywords are case-INSENSITIVE owner: Ron Minnich email: rminnich@lanl.gov #status: One of unsupported, unstable, stable status: unstable # Last-known-good follows the internationl date standard: day/month/year last-known-good: 0/0/0000 Comments: Great mainboard for a dashboard radio
I would suggest adding some information related to how or what booting modes have been tested, ie, DOC, IDE, etherboot, floppy, and with what console, serial, VGA, etc. In some cases the memory type or position (slot#) matters too.
-Steve
On Thu, 17 Oct 2002, Steve M. Gehlbach wrote:
I would suggest adding some information related to how or what booting modes have been tested, ie, DOC, IDE, etherboot, floppy, and with what console, serial, VGA, etc. In some cases the memory type or position (slot#) matters too.
done.
ron
Just an Idea, Exact revision(s) of mainboards tested might be needed.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Ronald G Minnich" rminnich@lanl.gov To: "Steve M. Gehlbach" steve@nexpath.com Cc: linuxbios@clustermatic.org Sent: Friday, October 18, 2002 12:46 AM Subject: RE: mainboard status
On Thu, 17 Oct 2002, Steve M. Gehlbach wrote:
I would suggest adding some information related to how or what booting
modes
have been tested, ie, DOC, IDE, etherboot, floppy, and with what
console,
serial, VGA, etc. In some cases the memory type or position (slot#)
matters
too.
done.
ron
Linuxbios mailing list Linuxbios@clustermatic.org http://www.clustermatic.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios
On Fri, 18 Oct 2002, CMZ wrote:
Just an Idea, Exact revision(s) of mainboards tested might be needed.
done
thanks, that was important!
ron
Wow,
This sounds really cool. One quick question though... What about boards that are "Generic" in terms of labels, where you have board name A, and board name B, when they are in fact the same board?
Would there be any benefit to a field called "OtherNames"? Or similar?
Regards,
Todd E. Johnson tejohnson@yahoo.com
On Thu, 17 Oct 2002, Todd E. Johnson wrote:
Would there be any benefit to a field called "OtherNames"? Or similar?
AKA?
ron
Hi again,
Are you asking, or telling me? Perhaps I missed this field? If not, this works for me!
Regards,
Todd E. Johnson tejohnson@yahoo.com
-----Original Message----- From: linuxbios-admin@clustermatic.org [mailto:linuxbios-admin@clustermatic.org] On Behalf Of Ronald G Minnich Sent: Thursday, October 17, 2002 4:24 PM To: Todd E. Johnson Cc: 'CMZ'; linuxbios@clustermatic.org Subject: RE: mainboard status
On Thu, 17 Oct 2002, Todd E. Johnson wrote:
Would there be any benefit to a field called "OtherNames"?
Or similar?
AKA?
ron
Linuxbios mailing list Linuxbios@clustermatic.org http://www.clustermatic.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios
On Thu, 17 Oct 2002, Todd E. Johnson wrote:
Are you asking, or telling me? Perhaps I missed this field? If not, this works for me!
sorry.
How about we call the alias field AKA for Also Known As?
ron
On Thursday 17 October 2002 3:41 pm, Ronald G Minnich wrote:
The file would look something like this:
# These are keyword-value pairs. # a : separates the keyword from the value # the value is arbitrary text delimited by newline. # continuation, if needed, will be via the \ at the end of a line # comments are indicated by a '#' as the first character. # the keywords are case-INSENSITIVE owner: Ron Minnich email: rminnich@lanl.gov #status: One of unsupported, unstable, stable status: unstable # Last-known-good follows the internationl date standard: day/month/year last-known-good: 0/0/0000 Comments: Great mainboard for a dashboard radio
Not sure whether to include this in the Comments field, or suggest an extra field called Notes, but make sure that html can be included so that hyperlinks can be used to point to other web pages containing more detailed notes on getting various bits to work, longer lists of retail systems including a specific motherboard, etc.
Antony.
I could just make a field called links?
ron
On Thursday 17 October 2002 5:59 pm, Ronald G Minnich wrote:
I could just make a field called links?
Sounds good. Then the individual mainboard owners can point to whatever information they like (whether it's theirs or someone else's).
Antony.