Slinkydetect, a hardware detection floppy

A large problem with collecting used hardware for redistribution to developing countries is to register and test the equipment. In this context, a bootfloppy that detects the hardware is needed. There are some DOS based utilities that do this, like those at simtel.net, but, at least in the case presented above, it is important to have tools that are Free as Free Speech.

Following a request on the RULE mailing list by Vegard Munthe of FAIR, Michael Fratoni merged detect with slinky, the RULE installer. The result is slinky-detect, a bootable hardware detection floppy. Originally, slinky-detect was hosted on Michael’s server. As of 2004/06/14. everything at that URL has been copied in a dedicated folder of the RULE download area.

How to use slinkydetect

In Linux, the bootable floppy can be created with this command:

  >dd if=slinky-detect.img of=/dev/fd0 bs=1440k

The just boot the computer with it. Once the floppy starts, it runs detect, and writes the output to the boot floppy (as report.txt). The system can then be powered down, as no disks are mounted. Overall startup to shutdown should be about 1 or 2 minutes. (We are booting from a floppy, after all.)

Just to have an idea of the potential of slinkydetect, here is the report.txt file generated on a test system:

  # This report has been generated by detect 0.9.72
  #

  CPU:GenuineIntel:Pentium II

  (Deschutes):350:[HAS_FPU:HAS_MMX]:699.59:(none)

  MEMORY:256744:249436:0:76:3068:0:0

  BRIDGE:PCI:Intel Corporation:440BX/ZX - 82443BX/ZX Host bridge:ignore

  BRIDGE:PCI:Intel Corporation:440BX/ZX - 82443BX/ZX AGP bridge:ignore

  BRIDGE:PCI:Intel Corporation:82371AB PIIX4 ISA:unknown

  IDE:PCI:Intel Corporation:82371AB PIIX4 IDE:unknown

  USB:PCI:Intel Corporation:82371AB PIIX4 USB:usb-uhci

  DISK:ATAPI/IDE:Unknown:WDC AC26400B:/dev/hdb:12594960:240:63:833

  DISK:ATAPI/IDE:Unknown:WDC AC310200R:/dev/hda:20033055:255:63:1247

  FLOPPY:Floppy Drive Controller:Unknown:1.44MB 3.5":/dev/fd0

  CDROM:ATAPI/IDE:Unknown:COMPAQ CRD-168P:/dev/hdc

  VIDEO:PCI:S3 Inc.:Trio64 (generic)      86c764/765

  [Trio32/64/64V+]:[Card:S3]:256:(null):(null)

  MOUSE:PS/2:Unknown:Unknown:/dev/psaux

  SERIAL:/dev/ttyS0:COM0

  OTHER:80867113:PCI:Intel Corporation:82371AB PIIX4 ACPI:ignore

How to associate to each report a unique HW identifier

To make the data gathering discussed below easier, Michael added to version 0.0.2 so that the machine is now assigned what should, for our purposes, be a unique identifier. The report is also saved using the same identifier. What is used is the output of ‘date +%s’ or “linux time” (seconds since `00:00:00 1970-01-01 UTC’) It prints this data to the console, so the person running the test can easily mark the machine. The data are still saved to the floppy, of course, so if the screen says:

  Detection complete, data saved to floppy.
  Machine ID: machine-1043448889

The report is saved to the floppy as “machine-1043448889″ Before writting to floppy, a test for available space is run as well. If space is getting low, the user is warned, but the file is still written. The warning will pop up when space on the floppy drops below 5k, which should be more than enough to write several more reports. (The disk has about 195k available, it’ll take well over 100 reports to fill that.)