Re: I'm want to improve hwsetup and hwdata-knoppix
On Fri, Sep 17, 2004 at 11:10:28AM +0300, AKL. Mantas Kriauciunas wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I wrote this letter about 2 months ago and didn't get any response
> :(
Sorry, it may have gotten lost in my mailfilters (standard excuse #88).
> As this is very important problem I'm planing to fix this problem
> ASAP. Because of this I need to know opinion from hwsetup developers
> (AFAIK there is only one - Klaus Knopper ;):
> - why pcitable from hwdata-knoppix doesn't use standart Redhat hwdata
> pcitable format and are there any plans to improve hwsetup to use standart
> pcitable format ?
Ahem... Could you specify in what way you assume the formats would differ?
IMHO, they don't. In fact, I'm just using RedHat's original pcitable and add
additional lines, and exchange some that are known to be incorrect by the
correct ones.
> - are there any plans to use latest hwdata package from Redhat/Fedora or to
> merge it with current hwdata-knoppix (current redhat version is 0.130 and
> contains lots of updates comparing with latest knoppix version, for
> example more than 50 new graphic cards in pcitable) ?
As soon as the Debian maintainer of hwdata puts a new package in
Debian/unstable.
> There are also other problems in hwdata-knoppix, for example there are
> lots of identifical lines (like "0x102b 0x0525" or "0x1002 0x5148") in
> pcitable.
Usually, the first one is taken in this case. Which other "lots" do you mean?
Can you just send a diff -u, please?
> -------------------------my letter------------------------
>
> There is a video harware detection problem in hwsetup tool from knoppix.
> This tool uses modified hwdata package (hwdata-knoppix) instead of standart
> hwdata from redhat (main difference is in pcitable - third column
> "Card: Video_Card_Model" in lots (but not in all) of cases is replaced with
> "Server:XFree86(x)"), so lots of hardware data info are outdated in
> hwdata-knoppix package and vesa is used instead of correct drivers.
This is apparently not true, if you just have a look at the database.
Could you send me the definite lines that cause problems for your hardware,
with a patch to use the _definitely correct_ lines instead?
> Most problems are with Intel, NVidia and Radeon chipsets (I think
> because of lots different cards models with these chipsets).
Please keep in mind that RedHat's original pcitable may contain entries that
require proprietary drivers which are not present in Knoppix, or have been
superseded by other lines that have been sent in by users who had problems with
the original setup.
> All tested video cards have pciids, listed in pci.ids and pcitable from
> /usr/share/hwdata (few cards are listed only in latest version of hwdata
> from fedora or debian sid), but vesa driver is used in most cased, because
> not all have replaced "Card: Video_Card_Model" with "Server:XFree86(x)" in
> third column of pcitable.
>
> Solution is to update hwsetup tool to use standart hwdata from redhat or
> debian, then correct driver would be used for most video cards.
There are no "drivers". hwsetup only identifies the correct XFree86 module for
changing /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 appropriately.
> I'm not experienced C programer, but I can help if more experenced have
> no time to improve hwsetup.
In which way would you change hwsetup? I may be misunderstanding your mail, but
nothing I have read so far would require a change to hwsetup.
hwsetup also parses the "Cards" database, if no "Xserver()" entry is present,
and takes the matching XF86Config-4 entries from there.
> Btw, it would ne nice if latest hardware detection (hwsetup and
> hwdata-knoppix) sources would be available from CVS or other version
> management system, then improving of hwdata/hwsetup would be easier (at
> least for other developers)
> hwsetup package at http://developer.linuxtag.net/knoppix/ is not updated
> since 15-Jan-2004 (last version is 1.0-14) and it would be nice to hear
> at least some plans about future improvements of hardware detection in
> knoppix.
Maybe this is just because there were no changes necessary to hwsetup since
then? Why should it be changed? In what way?
> In KNOPPIX-CHANGELOG.txt I've found, that in V3.6-2004-08-16 there was
> some hardware detection updates & fixes, so I wonder what fixes are in
> the latest version?
Usually an update of the hwdata package (from the Debian repository), or
changes to knoppix-autoconfig. As long as hwdata works fine, I see no reason
for changes there. Please help me out if I'm missing something.
Regards
-Klaus Knopper
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