Collecting harware information

Forum thread started by 6foot3 on Wed, 2010-04-28 00:45

Since I am not a developer and have a hard time keeping up with the mailing lists, I'm going to post this here in the hope that someone who participates in both the forums and the mailing list can pass it along. I have been doing a fair amount of testing lately, trying to boot Haiku (from a USB flash drive) on a few systems and even installing it on those that I can. If I'm going to file bug reports, I'd really like to provide a snapshot of the system (hardware) I'm having an issue with along with any other information I can provide.

Pieter Panman's Devices application does a decent job of reporting the hardware that Haiku has identified but there is no easy way to write all that info to a file. I'm not sure but, I think a file containing the output from the Devices app might be quite usefull for the developers. Would it be possible to add a "Write Data to File" (Generate System Information?) item to the Devices menu before alpha 2 goes out the door? That way the devs could ask users to attach the file to the bug report and get a good idea of the hardware environment the bug is occurring in.

Since the data allready exists in the application, I'm thinking it would not be too difficult to just write it out to a text file. The format of the output file wouldn't be cast in stone and could evolve into a more stable form by teh time R1 final is ready. Of course, maybe I'm completely out of my depth here!

edit: It would have bee usefull for me to read the "Tips for a helpful bug report" link on the "Welcome" page before writing that there's no easy way to write the hardware info to a file. On that page, I learned about the listdev command whose output can be re-directed to a file by appending "> filename.txt" to the command. The point made above still stands in the case of people who are averse to typing commands in a terminal.

Alan

Comments

Re: Collecting harware information

... I totally agree with you. Should be good to have a easy button for the systemlog. Where user can toggle between syslog on and off and get a info file on the desktop. That would be easy to use for a new user and helpful for bug tracking.

For myself I often forget the commands to use for the syslog which is in "Haiku" already. Somewhere in the /var folder. But you have to use the command-line and cd/ to it. there you will find the syslog file. Where one can turn syslog on and off.

The other command is ipconfig or ifconfig... to get a list of used devices... this list can be copied and pasted to a text file. As you can see I am not quit sure because I seldom use this commands.

Could be easier to get these infos for a user.

1. Open Terminal
2. Type cd /var/log to see the files type ls or dir
3. Type open syslog

Now you can save or edit your syslog.

ifconfig is for your internet connection.
Ipconfig is wrong.
listdev will schow your devices.

There was an Grafic App in Zeta with Hardware Informations, easy to find and save...

Re: Collecting harware information

i vote in agreement w original poster. users need GUI for ALL things one might be asked to do in terminal. BeOS never got that far. it'd be nice if Haiku aimed higher in that regard. terminal stuff isn't discoverable like features in a good GUI. & please don't just wrap listdev into a quick n dirty GUI shell. native GUI driven apps please, this isn't a unix ;)
with all due respect, since i'm unable to be a developer by neurological limits, of course!
cheers

Re: Collecting harware information

did you have a look at the boot menu. If I remember well, there is an option to save the syslog. (and it's documented in the user guide)

Re: Collecting harware information

if you use Ubuntu, you know that an integrated application sends (in one click) all specs of your hardware to ubuntu organization. i think, it's prestty easy to developp and very useful because even beginners users could send these data. and haiku could collect it (anonymously) to know major harware used.

Re: Collecting harware information

Its fairly easy to use 'Find' to locate syslog and use 'open with' and choose styled edit to open it by default.Cut and paste from terminal the output of 'listdev' into a text file...easy peasy. Getting floppy drives to work in Haiku would be nice.

Re: Collecting harware information

Sorry I don't agree with you.

Why should a common user know about "syslog" and for what to use it, where does he know about this command?

Some user does'nt know about cut and paste some know about copy, Where to paste it to?
Some dont know how to use a terminal, where they get to know about listdev.

Would be nice to have a button "Haiku Info" in the About this system panel. Like a Dialog:
press: Haiku info...
popup: Would you like to ""see" "print" "save" "send" the Information.
popup: your Systeminfo has saved to the desktop!

Something easy like that...