[Cooker] Mandriva HCL testing

[Romain d'Alverny | Mandriva]

Hi everyone,

we are almost done with a first public release of the HCL website.

What is it for? We expect it to serve as a report/lookup database for  
people to spot hardware that runs (Mandriva for now) Linux, and get  
it. So its main purpose is not being a full featured thing for geeks,  
although that still may be considered as an option.

Although it's not ironed out yet, neither complete, and that we are  
going to keep on improving bits in the next weeks, new, fresh eyes  
are welcome already at this point.

So if you have time, please have a look on it through http://
hcl.mandriva.com/session/beta (going directly on http://
hcl.mandriva.com won't let your enter the app otherwise).

  * for help, doc, please use this wiki page : http://
wiki.mandriva.com/en/Hardware_Compatibility_List - it is still very  
short, does not explain so much, I guess we will do it along comments;
  * for feature suggestion, please use this very wiki page for now;
  * for bug reports, please use the Bugzilla (http://
qa.mandriva.com), "Mandriva web site" product, "hcl" component.

You will not see that many interesting reports at first. One goal of  
this review precisely is: you check if you have hosts registered  
already, and then you do comment/rank them.

The key questions afterwise are: is it useful? is it simple to  
understand/use? what can be scratched out already? what is missing?

Special thanks to our trainees Keerthan, Quentin and Hamid for having  
helped/helping a lot on this. And thanks to you for your feedback!

 From Paris with love.

romain.

[Fabrice FACORAT]

2008/7/29 Romain d'Alverny|Mandriva <rdalverny@...>:

> Hi everyone,
>
> we are almost done with a first public release of the HCL website.
>
> What is it for? We expect it to serve as a report/lookup database for people
> to spot hardware that runs (Mandriva for now) Linux, and get it. So its main
> purpose is not being a full featured thing for geeks, although that still
> may be considered as an option.
>
> Although it's not ironed out yet, neither complete, and that we are going to
> keep on improving bits in the next weeks, new, fresh eyes are welcome
> already at this point.
>
> So if you have time, please have a look on it through
> http://hcl.mandriva.com/session/beta (going directly on
> http://hcl.mandriva.com won't let your enter the app otherwise).
>
>  * for help, doc, please use this wiki page :
> http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/Hardware_Compatibility_List - it is still very
> short, does not explain so much, I guess we will do it along comments;
>  * for feature suggestion, please use this very wiki page for now;
>  * for bug reports, please use the Bugzilla (http://qa.mandriva.com),
> "Mandriva web site" product, "hcl" component.
>
> You will not see that many interesting reports at first. One goal of this
> review precisely is: you check if you have hosts registered already, and
> then you do comment/rank them.
>
> The key questions afterwise are: is it useful? is it simple to
> understand/use? what can be scratched out already? what is missing?

the query algorithm could be improved.
When looking for "Dell Poweredge", I will have many pages with Dell,
but the ones with Poweredge in the name will be shown in furthers
pages, and not on the first ones. There's no ranking support in the
query ? just a simple FullText search ?



--
Close the World, Open the Net
http://www.linux-wizard.net

[Romain d'Alverny | Mandriva]

Le 29 juil. 08 à 19:44, Fabrice Facorat a écrit :
> the query algorithm could be improved.

Definitely, yes.

> When looking for "Dell Poweredge", I will have many pages with Dell,
> but the ones with Poweredge in the name will be shown in furthers
> pages, and not on the first ones. There's no ranking support in the
> query ? just a simple FullText search ?

On the current release, the search is still based on LIKE queries.  
But there is a fulltext one ready as well, we did not activate it  
because of... no valid reason, actually. :-p I switched to it on the  
trunk yesterday. Will be in the next update.

Thanks.

romain.

[Bruno Cornec-2]

Romain d'Alverny|Mandriva said on Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 07:22:35PM +0200:

> You will not see that many interesting reports at first. One goal of this
> review precisely is: you check if you have hosts registered already, and
> then you do comment/rank them.

And what does it bring to have a host registered in it without comment ?
For example, I was looking at HP products, found a server I know well
(dl360 g5) And had that result:

 Home »
HP Proliant dl360 g5
(1 hosts)

    *
      Proliant dl360 g5
      OTHER (unknown)
          o

            Mandriva Linux 2008, 2.6.22.9-desktop-1mdv
          o 1 hosts

How is it useful to someone, I don't really understand.
At the minimum, I wold expect a OK/NOK box somewhere, and then for those
interested the details per component.

> The key questions afterwise are: is it useful? is it simple to
> understand/use? what can be scratched out already? what is missing?

Currently, I don't find it useful. Isn't it a duplication of work
already done elswhere by other distros ? Shouldn't this topic be brought
to the LinuxFundation Distributions ML level and try to work on a common
set ?

Also you really need to standardize stuff: HP (not hp, hewlett-packard,
..) everything uppercase e.g., get the name from dmidecode/lshw, (and
add the lshw content to the web page), ...

Sorry to sound negative, I think the initiative is extremely useful, but
the current status is not what you should release.

Example of what competitors are doing:
https://hardware.redhat.com/show.cgi?id=148807
http://en.opensuse.org/HCL/Servers
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HardwareSupportMachinesServersHp

Not that their content is accurate completely, but you have a clear idea
of what works and doesn't at a glance generally.

Bruno.
--
Linux Profession Lead EMEA  / Open Source Evangelist \        HP C&I EMEA IET
http://www.mondorescue.org / HP/Intel Solution Center \  http://hpintelco.net
Des infos sur Linux?  http://www.HyPer-Linux.org      http://www.hp.com/linux
La musique ancienne?  http://www.musique-ancienne.org http://www.medieval.org

[Vincent Panel-3]

On Fri, Aug 8, 2008 at 1:51 PM, Bruno Cornec <Bruno.Cornec@...> wrote:

> Currently, I don't find it useful. Isn't it a duplication of work
> already done elswhere by other distros ? Shouldn't this topic be brought
> to the LinuxFundation Distributions ML level and try to work on a common
> set ?
>
> Example of what competitors are doing:
> https://hardware.redhat.com/show.cgi?id=148807
> http://en.opensuse.org/HCL/Servers
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HardwareSupportMachinesServersHp
>

You can't tell you've not been warned : this is all beta work.

All the websites you give have a common part, so it's duplication of
work too between them. You can't blame Mandriva for attempting to have
it's own HCL with hardware certified stations.

I think the real added value would be to integrate Mandriva HCL with
hardware4linux : a distro-agnostic hardware database. It's in the
pipe, if I've understand correctly.

Have a glance at the wiki page : you'll see the roadmap.

Vincent

[Romain d'Alverny | Mandriva]

Hi,

Le 8 août 08 à 13:51, Bruno Cornec a écrit :

> Romain d'Alverny|Mandriva said on Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 07:22:35PM  
> +0200:
>> You will not see that many interesting reports at first. One goal  
>> of this
>> review precisely is: you check if you have hosts registered  
>> already, and
>> then you do comment/rank them.
>
> And what does it bring to have a host registered in it without  
> comment ?

Nothing. We may as well not show these (see below).

> For example, I was looking at HP products, found a server I know well
> (dl360 g5) And had that result: [...]
>
> How is it useful to someone, I don't really understand.
> At the minimum, I wold expect a OK/NOK box somewhere, and then for  
> those
> interested the details per component.

The OK/NOK status comes from two sources:
  * people whose machine has been registered and who have ranked  
their system (one needs to login for that purpose; it may not be  
obvious at all for now);
  * Mandriva QA labs; that's step two.

At the moment, I have 6 reports in db about 6 distinct systems. I  
expected this beta preview to have people rank their own systems, but  
it appears almost no one does. Again, that may be not that obvious.

Actually, if users do not report on their system, it won't get any  
more useful.

As for the details per component, you may get these, but coming from  
a system (click on the component name). We do not make components  
available as a result of a search query, for now.


>> The key questions afterwise are: is it useful? is it simple to
>> understand/use? what can be scratched out already? what is missing?
>
> Currently, I don't find it useful. Isn't it a duplication of work
> already done elswhere by other distros ? Shouldn't this topic be  
> brought
> to the LinuxFundation Distributions ML level and try to work on a  
> common
> set ?

Well, I believe so. Still, my assignment to this point is to roll  
this one out and working first.

> Also you really need to standardize stuff: HP (not hp, hewlett-
> packard,
> ..) everything uppercase e.g., get the name from dmidecode/lshw, (and
> add the lshw content to the web page), ...

All the data we have is extracted from dmidecode and lshw already. So  
most issues about that should be fixed upstream as well, although we  
are working on making this better on the web side.

> Sorry to sound negative, I think the initiative is extremely  
> useful, but
> the current status is not what you should release.

It's a beta, that's really why I posted it as such and want to hear  
comments as yours and upgrade http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/ 
Hardware_Compatibility_List .

thanks! :-)

romain.

[Vincent Panel-3]

On Fri, Aug 8, 2008 at 2:43 PM, Romain d'Alverny|Mandriva
<rdalverny@...> wrote:
> At the moment, I have 6 reports in db about 6 distinct systems. I expected
> this beta preview to have people rank their own systems, but it appears
> almost no one does. Again, that may be not that obvious.
>
> Actually, if users do not report on their system, it won't get any more
> useful.
>

One of the possible reason is that's there's no clear explanation of
how to report on its system. The wiki page talk about the firsttime
wizard, but sorry I won't install mandriva completely just to report
on my system.

[Olivier Blin-2]

"Vincent Panel" <yohonet@...> writes:

> On Fri, Aug 8, 2008 at 2:43 PM, Romain d'Alverny|Mandriva
> <rdalverny@...> wrote:
>> At the moment, I have 6 reports in db about 6 distinct systems. I expected
>> this beta preview to have people rank their own systems, but it appears
>> almost no one does. Again, that may be not that obvious.
>>
>> Actually, if users do not report on their system, it won't get any more
>> useful.
>>
>
> One of the possible reason is that's there's no clear explanation of
> how to report on its system. The wiki page talk about the firsttime
> wizard, but sorry I won't install mandriva completely just to report
> on my system.

Run hclGUI

--
Olivier Blin (blino) - Mandriva

[Fabrice FACORAT]

2008/8/8 Olivier Blin <blino@...>:

> "Vincent Panel" <yohonet@...> writes:
>
>> On Fri, Aug 8, 2008 at 2:43 PM, Romain d'Alverny|Mandriva
>> <rdalverny@...> wrote:
>>> At the moment, I have 6 reports in db about 6 distinct systems. I expected
>>> this beta preview to have people rank their own systems, but it appears
>>> almost no one does. Again, that may be not that obvious.
>>>
>>> Actually, if users do not report on their system, it won't get any more
>>> useful.
>>>
>>
>> One of the possible reason is that's there's no clear explanation of
>> how to report on its system. The wiki page talk about the firsttime
>> wizard, but sorry I won't install mandriva completely just to report
>> on my system.
>
> Run hclGUI

thx.
I was testing the tool, but it didn't accept my email address which a
normal email but contains . and - :
f.blabla-blabla@...



--
Close the World, Open the Net
http://www.linux-wizard.net

[Fabrice FACORAT]

2008/8/8 Fabrice Facorat <fabrice.facorat@...>:

> 2008/8/8 Olivier Blin <blino@...>:
>> "Vincent Panel" <yohonet@...> writes:
>>
>>> On Fri, Aug 8, 2008 at 2:43 PM, Romain d'Alverny|Mandriva
>>> <rdalverny@...> wrote:
>>>> At the moment, I have 6 reports in db about 6 distinct systems. I expected
>>>> this beta preview to have people rank their own systems, but it appears
>>>> almost no one does. Again, that may be not that obvious.
>>>>
>>>> Actually, if users do not report on their system, it won't get any more
>>>> useful.
>>>>
>>>
>>> One of the possible reason is that's there's no clear explanation of
>>> how to report on its system. The wiki page talk about the firsttime
>>> wizard, but sorry I won't install mandriva completely just to report
>>> on my system.
>>
>> Run hclGUI
>
> thx.
> I was testing the tool, but it didn't accept my email address which a
> normal email but contains . and - :
> f.blabla-blabla@...

I've patched hclGUI to make it accept my email, it can connect
successfully to the server, but it failed to upload the file ...



--
Close the World, Open the Net
http://www.linux-wizard.net

[Vincent Panel-3]

On Fri, Aug 8, 2008 at 7:09 PM, Fabrice Facorat
<fabrice.facorat@...> wrote:

> 2008/8/8 Fabrice Facorat <fabrice.facorat@...>:
>> 2008/8/8 Olivier Blin <blino@...>:
>>> "Vincent Panel" <yohonet@...> writes:
>>>
>>>> On Fri, Aug 8, 2008 at 2:43 PM, Romain d'Alverny|Mandriva
>>>> <rdalverny@...> wrote:
>>>>> At the moment, I have 6 reports in db about 6 distinct systems. I expected
>>>>> this beta preview to have people rank their own systems, but it appears
>>>>> almost no one does. Again, that may be not that obvious.
>>>>>
>>>>> Actually, if users do not report on their system, it won't get any more
>>>>> useful.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> One of the possible reason is that's there's no clear explanation of
>>>> how to report on its system. The wiki page talk about the firsttime
>>>> wizard, but sorry I won't install mandriva completely just to report
>>>> on my system.
>>>
>>> Run hclGUI
>>
>> thx.
>> I was testing the tool, but it didn't accept my email address which a
>> normal email but contains . and - :
>> f.blabla-blabla@...
>
> I've patched hclGUI to make it accept my email, it can connect
> successfully to the server, but it failed to upload the file ...
>

I've successfully submitted one host (according to hclGUI), but I
can't find it... The model is here on hardware4linux :
http://www.hardware4linux.info/computers/sysinfo/66/ . On the Mandriva
HCL, I can find a lot of similar laptop (hp compaq nc6320)
http://hcl.mandriva.com/?q=nc6320, but they appear as distinct systems
because of a sort of "ID" next to their name, shouldn't they be
grouped together ? Then the id should be removed on the server side, I
think.

[Amrein-Marie Christophe]

It could be more interesting before working on Mandriva HCL to modify
drakfirstime and ask for user help for example:

- New drakfirstime update in the 2008.0 and 2008.1 repository.
- Next boot, drakfirstime explain why and ask for an hardware submit +
user comment:

It sent Module + hardware + a comment from the user if each hardware
works well (preselected as Ok for each hardware) + the name and brand of
the PC if any.

[Fabrice FACORAT]

2008/8/10 Amrein-Marie Christophe <camreinmarie@...>:

>
> It could be more interesting before working on Mandriva HCL to modify
> drakfirstime and ask for user help for example:
>
> - New drakfirstime update in the 2008.0 and 2008.1 repository.
> - Next boot, drakfirstime explain why and ask for an hardware submit +
> user comment:
>
> It sent Module + hardware + a comment from the user if each hardware
> works well (preselected as Ok for each hardware) + the name and brand of
> the PC if any.

don't necessarily a good idea ...
Indeed, with Free editions, you may not have some drivers or firmwares
whereas theses hardwares will work correctly once done.


--
Close the World, Open the Net
http://www.linux-wizard.net

[Amrein-Marie Christophe]

Le dimanche 10 août 2008 à 15:48 +0200, Fabrice Facorat a écrit :

> 2008/8/10 Amrein-Marie Christophe <camreinmarie@...>:
> >
> > It could be more interesting before working on Mandriva HCL to modify
> > drakfirstime and ask for user help for example:
> >
> > - New drakfirstime update in the 2008.0 and 2008.1 repository.
> > - Next boot, drakfirstime explain why and ask for an hardware submit +
> > user comment:
> >
> > It sent Module + hardware + a comment from the user if each hardware
> > works well (preselected as Ok for each hardware) + the name and brand of
> > the PC if any.
>
> don't necessarily a good idea ...
> Indeed, with Free editions, you may not have some drivers or firmwares
> whereas theses hardwares will work correctly once done.
>

And it could be interesting for Mandriva to know the differences
(another argument to use the full commercial DVD).

If you install a Linux distro because you read on their own website that
they fully support your hardware but after install... it's a mess...
because you needed to get the commercial DVD in fact, well...

[Romain d'Alverny | Mandriva]

Le 10 août 08 à 13:29, Vincent Panel a écrit :
> I've successfully submitted one host (according to hclGUI), but I
> can't find it...

Did you sign in HCL, and can you see it in the "My Hosts" page?

> The model is here on hardware4linux :
> http://www.hardware4linux.info/computers/sysinfo/66/ . On the Mandriva
> HCL, I can find a lot of similar laptop (hp compaq nc6320)
> http://hcl.mandriva.com/?q=nc6320, but they appear as distinct systems
> because of a sort of "ID" next to their name, shouldn't they be
> grouped together ? Then the id should be removed on the server side, I
> think.

Yes. There is _a lot_ of clean up to be done on the server side, this  
case is just one exemple among many others.

However, I'd like first to figure what this sort of id is for, if  
anyone has a clue. Other exemples:
  * Hp 500 notebook pc rq257aa#acb
  * Hp 500 notebook pc rq257aa#akb
  * Hp 500 notebook pc rw860aa#abm
  * Hp 510 notebook pc ru960aa#abd

romain.

[Vincent Panel-3]

On Sun, Aug 10, 2008 at 8:13 PM, Romain d'Alverny | Mandriva
<rdalverny@...> wrote:
> Le 10 août 08 à 13:29, Vincent Panel a écrit :
>>
>> I've successfully submitted one host (according to hclGUI), but I
>> can't find it...
>
> Did you sign in HCL

Yes

> and can you see it in the "My Hosts" page?

No

>> The model is here on hardware4linux :
>> http://www.hardware4linux.info/computers/sysinfo/66/ . On the Mandriva
>> HCL, I can find a lot of similar laptop (hp compaq nc6320)
>> http://hcl.mandriva.com/?q=nc6320, but they appear as distinct systems
>> because of a sort of "ID" next to their name, shouldn't they be
>> grouped together ? Then the id should be removed on the server side, I
>> think.
>
> Yes. There is _a lot_ of clean up to be done on the server side, this case
> is just one exemple among many others.

The laptop name comes from dmidecode (Product Name: HP Compaq nc6320
(EY401ET#UUG)). It's difficult to say who should solve this problem :
the hardware manufacturer, dmidecode, hclGUI or the HCL server ?

> However, I'd like first to figure what this sort of id is for, if anyone has
> a clue. Other exemples:
>  * Hp 500 notebook pc rq257aa#acb
>  * Hp 500 notebook pc rq257aa#akb
>  * Hp 500 notebook pc rw860aa#abm
>  * Hp 510 notebook pc ru960aa#abd

I've found out this "ID" is a "SKU number" which appears both in the
"Product Name" and "SKU Number" in dmidecode output. I think this is a
hardware manufacturer bug : no need for this number in the product
name, because it's already written under the "SKU Number" entry.

[Adam Williamson-4]

On Sun, 2008-08-10 at 16:34 +0200, Amrein-Marie Christophe wrote:

> And it could be interesting for Mandriva to know the differences
> (another argument to use the full commercial DVD).
>
> If you install a Linux distro because you read on their own website
> that
> they fully support your hardware but after install... it's a mess...
> because you needed to get the commercial DVD in fact, well...

There is no difference between One and PWP in terms of hardware support,
or between PWP and Free plus the public non-free repository.
--
adamw

[Vincent Panel-3]

Hi,

I've uploaded my system specs a while ago and I've just tested once
again hcl (beta III according to what I read in the banner).

In order to find my system, I tried the following ways :

* I log in : the login seems successful (although I would have liked a
little message like 'welcome xxx' at the top of the page or on the
right) but there's no link to my system

* The search function doesn't work at all : I tried to look for "HP
Compaq", "Compaq", "nc6320" and "nc6120" (which appears on the
homepage) and I get no results.

* If you click on "Laptop", the list of laptops is not alphabetically ordered

So I resubmitted my hardware using "hclGUI" found in "hcl" package and
the upload failed without any apparent reason (I just get a message
"File Uploading Failed").

Vincent.

[Romain d'Alverny | Mandriva]

Hi,

Le 25 sept. 08 à 11:21, Vincent Panel a écrit :
> In order to find my system, I tried the following ways :
>
> * I log in : the login seems successful (although I would have liked a
> little message like 'welcome xxx' at the top of the page or on the
> right) but there's no link to my system

Something like that could be nice, yes. Added something like this.

> * The search function doesn't work at all : I tried to look for "HP
> Compaq", "Compaq", "nc6320" and "nc6120" (which appears on the
> homepage) and I get no results.

The search is broken at this moment.

> * If you click on "Laptop", the list of laptops is not  
> alphabetically ordered

Consequence of the above.

> So I resubmitted my hardware using "hclGUI" found in "hcl" package and
> the upload failed without any apparent reason (I just get a message
> "File Uploading Failed").

System upload is still asynchronous with hclGUI, so that may be a  
reason. Plus we still had a problem with user accounts handling until  
today.

An update has been just pushed on the server, which should fix what  
would have been the cause for this. But it's not over. :-p

thx for the feedback!

romain.

[Fabrice FACORAT]

2008/9/25 Vincent Panel <yohonet@...>:
> Hi,

> So I resubmitted my hardware using "hclGUI" found in "hcl" package and
> the upload failed without any apparent reason (I just get a message
> "File Uploading Failed").

cf bug #42677



--
Close the World, Open the Net
http://www.linux-wizard.net