Re: i give up

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