Move hwd to current

jonathantan86 · 2004-09-03 08:24:52

In my two Arch Linux installations I have found hwd to be an indispensable tool in setting up my computer post-installation. Fortunately, both computers had 8139too ethernet cards so I was able to connect to the Internet via DSL and then go to the hwd website (using Links) to download and install hwd (this was before hwd was moved to Extra).

I think it would be very convenient for most people if hwd were to be included in the Arch Linux installation CD, that is, be moved to the Current repository. Any opinion from the administrators?

luigi · 2004-09-04 15:54:13

I second this.

sarah31 · 2004-09-04 17:41:14

hmmm ... well hwd is nice but it is no excuse for not knowing what is in your computer. if hwd was ever on the install cd it should be optional. there really should be no need for it if someone is prepared and edjucated. Remember you should be able to get all hardware information from your previous distro or windows without much trouble.

It is invaluable for you to know what comprises your system. someday you will be up the creek without a paddle without that knowledge.

aCoder · 2004-09-04 20:57:12

hmmm ... well hwd is nice but it is no excuse for not knowing what is in your computer. if hwd was ever on the install cd it should be optional. there really should be no need for it if someone is prepared and edjucated. Remember you should be able to get all hardware information from your previous distro or windows without much trouble.

Well, as much as I agree with that in a general sense, I've had experience with OEM PCs that don't come with hardware-related docs or have hardware identified by Windows as something vendor-specific that may not be accurate enough to use elsewhere.

It is invaluable for you to know what comprises your system. someday you will be up the creek without a paddle without that knowledge.

Which is exactly why everyone needs hwd!

LavaPunk · 2004-09-04 23:39:31

I think part of sarah's point is that you should know your hardware enough to install and get the network started, if not more. Once you're got a network you can download hwd as it is... But assuming you are really really clueless as to what your hardware is, you can use hwd off of the AL live cd or build it from source.

dp · 2004-09-05 00:02:34

i'm actually preparing for exames, so i should not read the forums, but customs are hard to stop ;-) ... and as hwd is a pkg i maintain, i must say why

hwd was in staging and i decided to move it to extra - only because of one reason: if you install arch freshly, you do not need to enable staging to get hwd - it was never intendend to make it part of the base pkgs (!) it is in order to be more easily available for people wanting it

i agree with Sarah, that people running a hardware should know elementarly what they are using (hell, if you want linux, you anyway need often to check if a hardware you intend to buy is supported by the actual kernel or additional modules, and if not, you are not buying this chipset!)

i also agree with aCoder, that often OEM PC's are sold "for the peuble" and the customer often do not know the chipset and the hardware details in advance

now we can dispute over an importance of hwd and why it is also good not having it (not only as a learning experience on how dependend we are on usefull software) --- i'm not going to give any arguments why and why not - as i should go preparing exams, i will give my point, that is: there is no reason why to include hwd on the installer cd!

why?

let's assume, we are going to install a fresh archlinux on a OEM PC: (the steps are, how i'm used to proceed and did for ~22 PC's successfully)

- first step:
download knoppix or other lifelinux capable of playing with partitions (parted + rw to all formats)

- second:
resize the preset NTFS partition with the lifelinux of your favour or remove it = make space

- third:
partitionize the drive with lifelinux to contain a empty 83 and 82 partition - write down (paper!), what partitions you have where

- fourth:
boot archlinux installer (either ftp or cd - doesn't matter)

- fifth:
install a basic archlinux, setup bootloader, make elementary settings to be able to boot the new installation

- sixth:
boot your installation

- sevnth:
now you are capable to install hwd with pacman and also use it if needed

-eight:
enjoy

there is no reason to need hwd earlier than after sixth step (booting fresh installation), so why including it on the cd? archlinux is not for newbies who do not like to learn (it is highly recomendend for interested newbies, but not for not-interested ones), and finding out what module you need for your NIC or other elementar functions is like a test, if archlinux is the right distro for you or not --- hwd is optional usefull addon, not essential part of the installer!

aCoder · 2004-09-05 03:01:46

there is no reason to need hwd earlier than after sixth step (booting fresh installation), so why including it on the cd? archlinux is not for newbies who do not like to learn (it is highly recomendend for interested newbies, but not for not-interested ones), and finding out what module you need for your NIC or other elementar functions is like a test, if archlinux is the right distro for you or not --- hwd is optional usefull addon, not essential part of the installer!

Well, there are 2 different CDs being maintained. The suggestion was that hwd could be moved to current, to make it sort of an 'official' part of Arch Linux, not to put it on the ISO with base and a few selected pkgs. For those that just want an 'easy way out' when putting Arch on an unfamiliar system, the ISO that contains all of current could be used.

rasat · 2004-09-05 05:35:50

sarah31 wrote:

Remember you should be able to get all hardware information from your previous distro or windows without much trouble.
It is invaluable for you to know what comprises your system. someday you will be up the creek without a paddle without that knowledge.

I will not comment about the topic subject, but about the hardware learning.

If its acceptable to get the information from previous distros or windows, what's wrong of getting it from hwd? It does not make any difference in the learning process, if we find the chip name in the hardware and search the module name in Internet, or using hwd... both gives the same information. The learning issue we are speaking about, what's not good, if hwd or other config tools does the configure automatically and the user didn't learn how to do it manually... that's the issue not from where user get the information.

The current short come of hwd information, what can be argued, it doesn't tell how it get some of the information like list of loaded modules and device names and id. The man page (generated as per detected hardwares) is still not upto same standard as a search in Internet or forum discussion .... I am working on it. One day it will replace this forum

PS.
Hwd generates one sample X config file, which may not be good for the learning. I had several time a situation with laptops when it was impossible to get X working without the sample file.

sarah31 · 2004-09-05 06:19:17

rasat wrote:

If its acceptable to get the information from previous distros or windows, what's wrong of getting it from hwd? It does not make any difference in the learning process, if we find the chip name in the hardware and search the module name in Internet, or using hwd... both gives the same information. The learning issue we are speaking about, what's not good, if hwd or other config tools does the configure automatically and the user didn't learn how to do it manually... that's the issue not from where user get the information.
PS.
Hwd generates a sample X config file which may not be good for the learning. I had several time a situation with laptops when it was impossible to get X working without the sample file.

the difference is that the person should know it before they come to arch. If hwd is in current then people will expect more and more kajiggers that make arch "easier" to use. then people will want graphical installers and other handholding. If no other developers come on board who do you expect to do it?

Paul · 2004-09-05 06:29:40

Hotplug should load the module for your nic automatically - at least it does on my computer. As for information on components/modules, I discovered alot using http://www.google.ca/linux.

jonathantan86 · 2004-09-05 06:32:26

I did compile hwd from source both times I installed Arch Linux. I was fortunate because the first NIC driver I tried both times (8139too) worked. If 8139too didn't work I wouldn't have known what driver to use, and wouldn't be able to download hwd.

- seventh:
now you are capable to install hwd with pacman and also use it if needed

I need hwd to tell me what driver to use for my NIC (unless there is an alternative way to determine it?) There was no indication of the driver needed in the NIC documentation. Without access to the Internet I wouldn't be able to use pacman.

And documentation is not always easy to get, especially if you're installing Arch on someone else's computer. Especially the allowed monitor refresh rates... I had difficulty using hwd's sample xf86config file (this was an old version of hwd), I ran xf86config and entered the values in according to hwd's probing.

rasat · 2004-09-05 06:41:07

sarah31 wrote:

If hwd is in current then people will expect more and more kajiggers that make arch "easier" to use. then people will want graphical installers and other handholding.

Good point.

From my experience whenever doing a fresh install on a new machine, the trouble is finding the module name for ethernet or PCMCIA card. This information would be nice getting during the install. The installation CD probes the modules for FTP-install. Why not also for CD install for the sake of information (dialog box with card and module name)?

EDIT
For post-install the internet connection is user's first concern, especially for those with base install, getting pacman to work. With connection it doesn't matter if packages are then in current or extra.

dp · 2004-09-05 11:08:11

jonathantan86 wrote:

I did compile hwd from source both times I installed Arch Linux. I was fortunate because the first NIC driver I tried both times (8139too) worked. If 8139too didn't work I wouldn't have known what driver to use, and wouldn't be able to download hwd.
- seventh:
now you are capable to install hwd with pacman and also use it if needed
I need hwd to tell me what driver to use for my NIC (unless there is an alternative way to determine it?) There was no indication of the driver needed in the NIC documentation. Without access to the Internet I wouldn't be able to use pacman.

that's a good point i forgot to explain further, sorry
after sixth step, running hotplug, in the first boot, you can see with

dmesg | grep eth

what is going on and if your nic was detected and running (what will for most linux-supported NIC's the case)

besides: remember step one? we had a lifelinux running

rasat · 2004-09-05 12:47:33

dp wrote:

after sixth step, running hotplug, in the first boot, you can see with
dmesg | grep eth

This doesn't give the name of module, name of card only. For my information, is there any other means to get module names than running "lspci -n" (pciutils package included in base) and then search the detected vendor and device id in pcitable (not included in the package). For USB its "lsusb" by usbutils package.

Example:
<b>lspci -n:</b>
00:0a.0 Class 0200: 10ec:8139 (rev 10)
<b>pcitable:</b>
10ec 8139 "8139too" "Realtek|RTL-8139"

What if we add in installation CD the script from hwd what does only this (hwd -v):

PCI DEVICE
VendID  DevID   Module          Description
10de    0111    "Server:XFree86(vesa)"  "NV11 DDR (GeForce)"
10ec    8139    "8139too"       "Realtek|RTL-8139"
1106    0571    "ignore"        "VIA Technologies|VT82C586A/B/VT82C686 PIPC Bus Master IDE"
1106    0686    "unknown"       "VIA Technologies|VT82C686 [Apollo Super South]"
1106    0691    "agpgart"       "VIA Technologies|VT82C693A/694x [Apollo PRO133x]"
1106    3038    "unknown"       "VIA Technologies|USB"
1106    3057    "unknown"       "VIA Technologies|VT82C686 [Apollo Super ACPI]"
1106    3058    "via82cxxx_audio"       "VT82C686 [Apollo Super AC97/Audio]"
1106    8598    "ignore"        "VIA Technologies|VT82C598/694x [Apollo MVP3/Pro133x AGP]"

USB DEVICE
VendID  DevID  Module         Description
058f    9380   "usb-storage"  "Alcor Micro, Inc.|Mobile Hard Disk"

dp · 2004-09-05 15:17:26

[damir@Asteraceae /]$ dmesg | grep eth
e100: eth0: e100_probe: addr 0xd0200000, irq 11, MAC addr #:#:#:#:#:#
ip1394: eth1: IEEE-1394 IPv4 over 1394 Ethernet (fw-host0)
e100: eth0: e100_watchdog: link up, 100Mbps, full-duplex
eth0: no IPv6 routers present

e100 and ip1394 are used

rasat · 2004-09-05 15:53:39

For RealTek "dmesg | grep eth" doesn't show module name (8139too).

[root@localhost rasat]# dmesg | grep eth
eth0: RealTek RTL8139 at 0xd0aaf000, 00:0e:2e:23:71:66, IRQ 10
eth0:  Identified 8139 chip type 'RTL-8100B/8139D'
eth0: link up, 100Mbps, full-duplex, lpa 0x45E1
eth0: no IPv6 routers present
[root@localhost rasat]#

If you know what to search in kernel message the module name is there ..... why then using dmesg . Moreover how many users will know what are module names in the message.

[root@localhost rasat]# dmesg | grep 8139too
8139too Fast Ethernet driver 0.9.27
[root@localhost rasat]#

What I am not sure, will the module show up in dmesg if not compiled in kernel. With pciutils you will always find the vendor and device id.

ravster · 2004-09-05 16:33:32

But this would happen only if the correct module was found during boot-time, right? What if the module was not found during boot-time? It does not seem like this could happen, since the module would be loaded the moment the card was identified.
But I remember when I did an ftp install and after booting I could'nt connect. I had to boot into RH8 and do a 'lsmod' to find out exactly which module I needed loaded. I don't know how this happened, but it happened. This was with the 0.6Base ISO, this might be already fixed now. I don't know about that. Using hwd would have been quite helpful in my case.

PS:- Looking at the archstats shows that about 25% of the users have hwd installed. With about 1/4th of the users using a system program, it might be nice to include it in the base install, as an additional/optional package or something.

dp · 2004-09-05 17:04:06

rasat, you are right - some modules are so quiet that they do not tell you what device they use, so lspci gives more info in the general case

sweiss · 2004-09-05 20:12:04

Not that I have much saying in this, but why not including it? It's small, it's useful. As for the potential newbies who will request other hand holding measures, well, good for them. Arch is described as a distribution for the more advanced people, just like Slackware, which probes all of your hardware automatically.

When I came to install Arch I just used lsmod in my Slackware install and used it for Arch, so not much knowledge was gained.

Also, as others already said, hwd does teach you a little, as it does not edit any files for you, but shows you where and how to edit them. This teaches you about Arch in the process as well.

I do not think Arch will lose its educational value, with or without hwd.

dp · 2004-09-05 21:41:02

in my eyes, there is no need for hwd before the first boot of a basic system and the first -Suy, but everyone can post a feature request under bugs.archlinux.org

aCoder · 2004-09-05 21:57:29

in my eyes, there is no need for hwd before the first boot of a basic system and the first -Suy, but everyone can post a feature request under bugs.archlinux.org

There may not be a need for it, but I wouldn't consider it bloat. Some people couldn't -Syu until they would like to use hwd, ie. a network card. hwd could help many people with onboard ethernet who couldn't get anymore info than realtek, intel, or hp from any other source. Finding modules for these cards can also be made difficult by the 2.4 -> 2.6 switch. Personally, switching from Slackware myself, could see problems there. Not that anyone with sense and Linux experience couldn't figure it out with a little tedious work, and I certainly don't mind work setting up a system, but there are are some tedious little tasks that I could certainly live without.

As a suggestion, I would say that hwd could be 'split' to have portions specific to a certain type of hardware. I think it would be great to include something along the lines of 'hwd-net' on the CD.

aCoder · 2004-09-06 01:15:51

one more scenario - you buy a brand new computer without a preinstalled OS and no docs at all - you have no other computer available - your friend gives you some arch install disks. to find out what your hardware is tho you have to install windows first - or use another auto detecting distro.

Actually, this happened to me before I had the PC I have now. I got a little pissed off at my old box and took a baseball bat to it, so I went garage sale surfing for a new PC, and I found one. The HDD was completely hosed and I knew nothing about it, but it only cost $20 and was fairly new. However, I was given RedHat instead of Arch, and everything worked quite well and I know everything about it now and recently put Arch on it. It's showing its age though, so I may replace it with one of those shiny new iMacs sometime soon.

Arch Linux

#1 2004-09-03 08:24:52

Move hwd to current

#2 2004-09-04 15:54:13

Re: Move hwd to current

#3 2004-09-04 17:41:14

Re: Move hwd to current

#4 2004-09-04 20:57:12

Re: Move hwd to current

#5 2004-09-04 23:39:31

Re: Move hwd to current

#6 2004-09-05 00:02:34

Re: Move hwd to current

#7 2004-09-05 03:01:46

Re: Move hwd to current

#8 2004-09-05 05:35:50

Re: Move hwd to current

#9 2004-09-05 06:19:17

Re: Move hwd to current

#10 2004-09-05 06:29:40

Re: Move hwd to current

#11 2004-09-05 06:32:26

Re: Move hwd to current

#12 2004-09-05 06:41:07

Re: Move hwd to current

#13 2004-09-05 11:08:11

Re: Move hwd to current

#14 2004-09-05 12:47:33

Re: Move hwd to current

#15 2004-09-05 15:17:26

Re: Move hwd to current

#16 2004-09-05 15:53:39

Re: Move hwd to current

#17 2004-09-05 16:33:32

Re: Move hwd to current

#18 2004-09-05 17:04:06

Re: Move hwd to current

#19 2004-09-05 20:12:04

Re: Move hwd to current

#20 2004-09-05 21:41:02

Re: Move hwd to current

#21 2004-09-05 21:57:29

Re: Move hwd to current

#22 2004-09-06 01:15:51

Re: Move hwd to current

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