Gotta start somewhere ... how many of us are really out there?

[backyard1454-bsd at yahoo.com]

--- User Freebsd <freebsd at hub.org> wrote:

> On Thu, 3 Aug 2006, Antony Mawer wrote:
> 
> > Agreed...
> >
> > I could probably add around 1,500 systems that
> could conceivably be setup to 
> > chime in with their numbers periodically; one of
> the pre-requisites for that 
> > would be that the access method be HTTP or HTTPS
> based so it could be relayed 
> > via a proxy...
> >
> > Another nice thing to include might be a hash of
> hardware inventory (a 
> > further opt-in thing beyond the basic checkins)...
> Mark alluded to this early 
> > in the piece, but it would be nice to be able to
> pull up something that said 
> > "hang on, out of the X% of users on file, Y% are
> using Adaptec SCSI cards, in 
> > particular model XYZ"... this would be very
> helpful when trying to get vendor 
> > support etc...
> >
> > Some form of hash calculated on these would allow
> you to detect if they had 
> > changed at all, and only re-send them in the event
> of a change...
> >
> > ... just thinking out loud ... !
> 
> 'k, so, how do we script this then?
> 
> Getting a list of devices is actually pretty easy,
> and I've tried this on 
> my 4.x machines also, so it isn't something that
> will be a problem on 
> older versions:
> 
> # pciconf -l
> chip0 at pci0:0:0: class=0x060000 card=0x00000000
> chip=0x700c1022 rev=0x20 hdr=0x00
> pcib1 at pci0:1:0: class=0x060400 card=0x00000000
> chip=0x700d1022 rev=0x00 hdr=0x01
> isab0 at pci0:7:0: class=0x060100 card=0x00000000
> chip=0x74401022 rev=0x05 hdr=0x00
> none0 at pci0:7:1: class=0x01018a card=0x74411022
> chip=0x74411022 rev=0x04 hdr=0x00
> chip1 at pci0:7:3: class=0x068000 card=0x74431022
> chip=0x74431022 rev=0x03 hdr=0x00
> asr0 at pci0:9:0:  class=0x010400 card=0xc0351044
> chip=0xa5111044 rev=0x01 hdr=0x00
> none1 at pci0:11:0:        class=0x020000
> card=0x10018086 chip=0x100f8086 rev=0x01 hdr=0x00
> pcib2 at pci0:16:0:        class=0x060400
> card=0x00000000 chip=0x74481022 rev=0x05 hdr=0x01
> none2 at pci2:0:0: class=0x0c0310 card=0x74491022
> chip=0x74491022 rev=0x07 hdr=0x00
> none3 at pci2:7:0: class=0x030000 card=0x80081002
> chip=0x47521002 rev=0x27 hdr=0x00
> fxp0 at pci2:8:0:  class=0x020000 card=0x10408086
> chip=0x12298086 rev=0x10 hdr=0x00
> 
> And, more specifically, we can get:
> 
> # pciconf -l -v
> asr0 at pci0:9:0:  class=0x010400 card=0xc0351044
> chip=0xa5111044 rev=0x01 hdr=0x00
>      vendor   = 'Adaptec (Formerly: Distributed
> Processing Technology (DPT))'
>      device   = 'Raptor SmartRAID Controller'
>      class    = mass storage
>      subclass = RAID
> 
> So, with that one command, we can get a fair amount
> of hardware 
> information ... but, how to feed that into a proper
> HTTP request? 
> Storing all of that information would be cool, cause
> then we could build 
> reports based on device driver / vendor / device /
> class and subclass ... 
> but that might be a bit heavy to do in an HTTP
> request, no?  I take it 
> email isn't an option, in your case?
> 
> ----
> Marc G. Fournier           Hub.Org Networking
> Services (http://www.hub.org)
> Email . scrappy at hub.org                             
> MSN . scrappy at hub.org
> Yahoo . yscrappy               Skype: hub.org       
> ICQ . 7615664
> _______________________________________________
> freebsd-questions at freebsd.org mailing list
>
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
> To unsubscribe, send any mail to
> "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe at freebsd.org"
> 

maybe it's just because I've been reading up on it but
what about outputting the information in XML??? Then
you could tag the Vendor, Name, basic info, number of
users, etc. in a tagged form that could be then stored
in a Dbase of some kind by vendor, working in FreeBSD
X.Y, broken, etc. The XML should be easily outputted
on the fly to XHTML so it can be reviewed by
devolopers and what not. Just my too cents...

definately thinking out loud

-brian