From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Dec 1 06:17:50 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0D859106564A; Mon, 1 Dec 2008 06:17:50 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from kientzle@freebsd.org) Received: from kientzle.com (kientzle.com [66.166.149.50]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B48388FC18; Mon, 1 Dec 2008 06:17:49 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from kientzle@freebsd.org) Received: from [10.123.2.178] (p53.kientzle.com [66.166.149.53]) by kientzle.com (8.12.9/8.12.9) with ESMTP id mB16Hitv097385; Sun, 30 Nov 2008 22:17:44 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from kientzle@freebsd.org) Message-ID: <49338183.3040500@freebsd.org> Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2008 22:17:39 -0800 From: Tim Kientzle User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20060422 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Andrew Reilly References: <20081128234155.0221e263@serene.no-ip.org> <3cb459ed0811291342i524eaab3g1acadcd9cbdb638b@mail.gmail.com> <7d6fde3d0811291556g3f08a814td68466ad02dee4fc@mail.gmail.com> <200811291515.01962.beech@freebsd.org> <4932DD73.9000109@freebsd.org> <20081130235621.GA51043@duncan.reilly.home> In-Reply-To: <20081130235621.GA51043@duncan.reilly.home> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Garrett Cooper , "Conrad J. Sabatier" , freebsd-current@freebsd.org, Alexander Churanov , Beech Rintoul Subject: Re: i give up X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 01 Dec 2008 06:17:50 -0000 Andrew Reilly wrote: > On Sun, Nov 30, 2008 at 10:37:39AM -0800, Tim Kientzle wrote: > >>I wonder if there's some way to partially automate >>collecting some of this information. > > There is. Just install ports/sysutils/bsdstats, set the > appropriate frobs in /etc/rc.conf and be happy. Look at the > http://bsdstats.org/ page from time to time. This is a start towards what I had in mind, but still has a ways to go. Here are a few questions I would like to ask of such a database: "What ethernet cards have people used with FreeBSD 7.0?" This would require being able to start from a particular OS (and version?). "I have a Broadcom card, what driver do I need with FreeBSD 7?" This requires being able to navigate from OS/version to device type, manufacturer, then driver. This should also have callouts for any driver that's not part of the GENERIC kernel. "pciconf just gave me an ID xyz123; what chip is that?" I see device names but not hardware-level IDs. "Any suggestions for a good network card to buy?" This information seems to stop at the chipset level. When I go to the store, very few boxes have chipset names on them. It would be good to give users the option to provide a manufacturer (and product name?) for the card or motherboard in use. Such information would necessarily be more sporadic than the automatically collected information, but it would build up over time. Based on the numbers here, I'm going to guess that PC-BSD has this service turned on by default. You should talk to folks maintaining installers for other systems about possibly getting it integrated there. (With clearly-worded notices about data being anonymous, etc.) It would also be interesting to use this from the installer to look up missing drivers (enumerate PCI IDs for any device that didn't attach a driver and query the bsdstats service for information about that device); this would make it a lot easier for users to find drivers supported out-of-tree. Such a database could provide very useful information to the development community ("most popular unsupported ethernet cards") and to users ("most popular supported ethernet cards"). Tim