[opensuse-factory] Automatic hardware detection and configuration.
After numerous requests for information on what to do when replacing a graphics card and booting to end up with a black/blank screen, it's made me wonder: Why on earth isn't SUSE maintaining a list of all the devices attached, performing a check each time it boots, and asking the user if they'd like to configure any new devices that have been added? For a lot of devices it does ask about configuring them once you're at the desktop. The problem with this is that for a graphics card, that's a bit too late. It should take a matter of a couple of seconds, if that, to query all the device IDs attached to the PCI bus. If it finds a new device, it can then look up to see what type of device it is, whether one of the other devices has been removed and if the new card is of the same type, and then, if required, flag it to be configured. When a graphics card is no longer present, but another one is found, offer the choice to either configure it now or later. Where the user puts off configuring the card, put a flag against the card so same choice is presented during the next boot. What's more, in the case of a graphics card, it could then force a boot into run-level 3 so as to prevent the "black screen" problem. That way the user can either reboot the system, or log in at a console, so they can perform the configuration. It would then be a case of adding a small check to sax, or whichever YaST module is used to perform this configuration, so that it checks to see if the flag is present. If the flag is there, once the configuration is complete, remove the flag and the user isn't asked about this again. Regards, David Bolt -- Member of Team Acorn checking nodes at 50 Mnodes/s: http://www.distributed.net/ RISCOS 3.11 | SUSE 10.0 32bit | SUSE 10.0 64bit | openSUSE 10.2 32bit RISCOS 3.6 | SUSE 10.1 32bit | SUSE 10.1 64bit | openSUSE 10.2 64bit TOS 4.02 | SUSE 9.3 32bit | | openSUSE 10.3a1 32bit --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org
David Bolt skrev:
After numerous requests for information on what to do when replacing a graphics card and booting to end up with a black/blank screen, it's made me wonder:
Why on earth isn't SUSE maintaining a list of all the devices attached, performing a check each time it boots, and asking the user if they'd like to configure any new devices that have been added? For a lot of devices it does ask about configuring them once you're at the desktop. The problem with this is that for a graphics card, that's a bit too late.
Another option would be to have some kind of failsafe xserver, that runs with the vesa driver in 800x600. This could be usefull for other cases as well like if a kernel update broke the nvidia driver
It should take a matter of a couple of seconds, if that, to query all the device IDs attached to the PCI bus. If it finds a new device, it can then look up to see what type of device it is, whether one of the other devices has been removed and if the new card is of the same type, and then, if required, flag it to be configured.
When a graphics card is no longer present, but another one is found, offer the choice to either configure it now or later. Where the user puts off configuring the card, put a flag against the card so same choice is presented during the next boot. What's more, in the case of a graphics card, it could then force a boot into run-level 3 so as to prevent the "black screen" problem. That way the user can either reboot the system, or log in at a console, so they can perform the configuration.
It would then be a case of adding a small check to sax, or whichever YaST module is used to perform this configuration, so that it checks to see if the flag is present. If the flag is there, once the configuration is complete, remove the flag and the user isn't asked about this again.
Regards, David Bolt
Simon --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org
* David Bolt <bcrafhfr-rqtr@davjam.org> [Mar 04. 2007 18:09]:
After numerous requests for information on what to do when replacing a graphics card and booting to end up with a black/blank screen, it's made me wonder:
Why on earth isn't SUSE maintaining a list of all the devices attached, performing a check each time it boots, and asking the user if they'd like to configure any new devices that have been added?
Well, the list of known devices is kept below /var/lib/hardware/udi/ If a changed graphics card isn't properly detected, I'd consider this a bug. The system should either run SaX directly or use "yast2 x11" to do the configuration. Klaus --- SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nürnberg) --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org
On Mon, 5 Mar 2007, Klaus Kaempf <kkaempf@suse.de> wrote:-
* David Bolt <bcrafhfr-rqtr@davjam.org> [Mar 04. 2007 18:09]:
Why on earth isn't SUSE maintaining a list of all the devices attached, performing a check each time it boots, and asking the user if they'd like to configure any new devices that have been added?
Well, the list of known devices is kept below /var/lib/hardware/udi/
Didn't know about that.
If a changed graphics card isn't properly detected, I'd consider this a bug.
So would I. However, since I don't usually change my graphics cards once they're installed, I've not yet had this problem occur and so can't exactly file a bug report on it.
The system should either run SaX directly or use "yast2 x11" to do the configuration.
Given that this black/blank screen problem keeps being asked about[0], I'm assuming that this isn't actually happening. [0] Here's just a couple of recent queries on this subject: <URL:http://groups.google.co.uk/group/alt.os.linux.suse/browse_frm/thread/d81585a423ceccba/d7ab627ad95d64c7> <URL:http://groups.google.co.uk/group/alt.os.linux.suse/browse_frm/thread/3c2713266d5c3d56/6527b7d3852b6c7c> Regards, David Bolt -- Member of Team Acorn checking nodes at 50 Mnodes/s: http://www.distributed.net/ RISCOS 3.11 | SUSE 10.0 32bit | SUSE 10.0 64bit | openSUSE 10.2 32bit RISCOS 3.6 | SUSE 10.1 32bit | SUSE 10.1 64bit | openSUSE 10.2 64bit TOS 4.02 | SUSE 9.3 32bit | | openSUSE 10.3a1 32bit --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org
participants (3)
-
David Bolt -
Klaus Kaempf -
Simon Strandman