possibility of opening hardware stats ? Smolts

[Martin Owens]

> What would be cool though is to know what kind of hardware are people using
> I know that currently we have a closed database which doesn't help anybody
> as the info. is requested repeatedly whenever a new bug is being registered.

It's a set of nasty problems:

1) Device and/or hardware identification (not always easy)
2) Filtering ambiguities and inaccuracies (take a look at smolt, how
many "O.E.M Fill in here" motherboards are there?)
3) Supporting and structuring meta information, correct names, correct
manufacturers. Even so far as the list features and metrics, icons and
pictures.
4) Centralising and analysing, you can't do this until you have 1 and 2.
Then you need everyone to be running on the same standard.

Unfortunately, smolt and many other ideas have jumped strait to 4
without considering that perhaps 1 and 2 are important to sort out
first. My own project, which I've shut down since, taught me a great
deal about some of these weird and wonderful issues.

In conclusion, I believe that the way forward is to fix these issues:

1) Gather dmi, bios, i2c and other system information sources with
kernel level drivers able to deliver this information via sysfs or some
other mechanism.
2) Populate and structure Hal (and it's replacement) in such a way to
accommodate this "none functional" information sources. This includes
being able to distinguish between a hardware object and a device object.
3) Be able to generate a unique hardware class ids that allow
destinations, even when normal class ids are the same (examples of
scanners, phones, motherboards with the same usb or pci ids but
different metrics)

Only then can you start fixing this problem properly.

Regards, Martin Owens