mainboard status

[Ronald G Minnich]

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:  [e-mail]
#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

[Daniel Freedman]

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?

[Ronald G Minnich]

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

[Ronald G Minnich]

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

[Steve M. Gehlbach]

> 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:  [e-mail]
> #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

[Ronald G Minnich]

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

[CMZ]

Just an Idea, Exact revision(s) of mainboards tested might be needed.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ronald G Minnich" 
To: "Steve M. Gehlbach" 
Cc: 
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
> [e-mail]
> http://www.clustermatic.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios

[Ronald G Minnich]

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

[Todd E. Johnson]

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
[e-mail]

[Ronald G Minnich]

On Thu, 17 Oct 2002, Todd E. Johnson wrote:
> Would there be any benefit to a field called "OtherNames"? Or similar?

AKA?

ron

[Todd E. Johnson]

Hi again,

Are you asking, or telling me?  Perhaps I missed this field?  If not,
this works for me!

Regards,

Todd E. Johnson
[e-mail]
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [e-mail] 
> [mailto:[e-mail]] On Behalf Of Ronald 
> G Minnich
> Sent: Thursday, October 17, 2002 4:24 PM
> To: Todd E. Johnson
> Cc: 'CMZ'; [e-mail]
> 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
> [e-mail]
> http://www.clustermatic.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios

[Ronald G Minnich]

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

[Antony Stone]

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:  [e-mail]
> #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.

[Ronald G Minnich]

I could just make a field called links?

ron

[Antony Stone]

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.