Date: Thu, 24 Oct 2002 14:56:53 -0400 From: Brian Reichert <reichert@numachi.com> To: hackers@freebsd.org Subject: RFC: standardize device probe messages? Message-ID: <20021024145653.E22898@numachi.com>
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I'm poking at a little project that will get me 'System Info' a la the Microsoft experience. Simply enough, it just scans '/var/log/dmesg.today' for device info from the last boot. The resulting data can obviously be browsed in all sorts of useful ways. But, my scanning efforts revealed some inconsistencies in how these messages are formatted. Not surprising, really. To accomplish my most immediate goals, I hacked all sorts of exceptions into my scanner, but that obviously only reflects my kernel, and hence won't be useful on the larger scale. The answer, to me, seems to be to: - undergo an effort to developing a regular format - tweaking the myriad drivers to use that format There are some obviously regularities: device: <Identifier> at [[resource value] ...] [on parent] device: miscellaneous informative text I think (without even looking at the source) that it should be a straightforward task to patch these cosmetic changes into the various drivers, and to perhaps update style(9) to reflect this. Would people feel that this is a useful endeavor? I'd be happy to spearhead such an effort, but I don't want to waste my time if these proposed conventions aren't carried forward. Essentially, I need to treat the output of dmesg (WRT device probes) as a database, and I want a schema for that database. I think the advantage of having this info, on the scale of just your desktop, would be helpful for debugging hardware problems, etc., would be obvious to most people. For large installations, I think being able to extract this data will help with resource management, as you could essentially inventory your machines by what hardware they're running. Image being able to learn with of your machines may be affected by an updated or deprecated driver after an upgrade? :) Off to have more coffee... -- Brian 'you Bastard' Reichert <reichert@numachi.com> 37 Crystal Ave. #303 Daytime number: (603) 434-6842 Derry NH 03038-1713 USA Intel architecture: the left-hand path To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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