Linux hardware inventory: Current reality, future possibilities

WhoMartin Schwenke
WhereAUUG 2003 - Open Standards, Open Source, Open Computing, Sydney
WhenSeptember 2003
Abstract

The lsvpd and lscfg commands are used on AIX® systems to list interesting information about the hardware that makes up a system. These commands have been partially reverse-engineered and reimplemented for Linux® running on PowerPC®. The Linux versions have reached a point where they are likely to provide useful information for an IBM service engineer who is familiar with the AIX commands, but comes across a pSeries® machine that is running Linux.

The first part of this paper covers progress so far: the early days of the project - this should take a few hours; a Perl prototype - Perl probably isn't available early enough it the boot sequence, so we'll call it a prototype; more experiments in C and Bourne shell - success at last; and packaging issues - would you like find with that?

The second part of this paper covers possible futures: including cross-architecture hardware inventory and device-naming. Some of this involves changing the direction of various parts of the project and looking at areas that are outside the scope of the project.

SlidesPDF (364.8 kB)
PaperPDF (186.0 kB)