Re: Needed: Files/info for sysinfo development

[Roger Dingledine <arma@mit.edu>]

In message <98071000431501.02373@localhost.localdomain>, twoducks@globalserve.net writes:
>I am currently writing a prototype for a sys-info program
>(or set of programs) which determine the hardware
>running on a system and provide the device information
>in a pretty way. I have done almost as much as I can using
>my hardware, but wanted to do some further development on
>hardware I do not own before presenting my work for scrutiny
>(plus I need more time to improve the GUI).

Sounds good. I recommend focusing on static displays of
hardware settings rather than dynamic displays of meminfo,
cpuinfo, etc. Programs like xosview, top, xload, xnetload are
very common these days, so you'd be duplicating a lot of work.

On the other hand, a program that went through and display
current hardware settings in a nice graphical manner would be
a valuable contribution to the Linux world.

Have you looked very far into using gtk? I think that for the
audience that sort of program would appeal to, it needs to either
be gtk or kde before people start seriously considering it. Granted
that if you write a good backend somebody will eventually get around
to writing a good frontend for it, but I think they should be more
integrated than that. Also, using a common toolkit is crucial for
getting other people to want to help out on development.

>The following information would also be usefull:
>o Other files which contain hardware/device information

/var/adm/dmesg is an awfully good place to look. It's what the
kernel reports when it boots.

I've been looking for a "/proc howto", and I have totally failed
to find one. There are plenty of places that describe the canonical
files you might find in /proc, but I haven't found anything that
has a comprehensive list of anything that might show up there.

That might be a useful separate project: go through and document
what various modules or kernel options put in /proc. The place to
start is
http://lxr.linux.no/source/include/linux/proc_fs.h
but note also that
http://lxr.linux.no/source/include/linux/proc_fs.h?v=2.1.108
has introduced a lot of new files. I don't know how many of these
will survive to 2.2.

Similarly
http://lxr.linux.no/source/fs/proc/root.c and
http://lxr.linux.no/source/fs/proc/root.c?v=2.1.108
are different, not only because of new /proc files but also because
of the introduction of the dentry concept in 2.1.

Random links of interest:
http://www.uwsg.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/9605.0/0530.html
http://www.fusebox.hanse.de/xlogmaster/
http://www.gedanken.demon.co.uk/procmeter/
http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/cache/sunsite.unc.edu/mdw/LDP/khg/khg.html
(argh! redhat took over the khg and now I can't find a useful /proc
 section in it anymore, just a table of contents with broken links!)
http://sunsite.unc.edu/LDP/LDP/sag/node27.html#SECTION00450000000000000000

Also note the 'procinfo' command, and 'man 5 proc'

--Roger