How do I deal with multiple hardware setups?

Eric Eisenhart eric at eisenhart.com
Wed Oct 31 16:09:24 PST 2001


On Wed, Oct 31, 2001 at 03:43:29PM -0800, Lincoln Peters wrote:
> First, here's what I do NOT need to worry about:
> CPU: Although the GX1's are PII systems and the GX110 are PIII's, the kernel 
> was compiled for 386's. No problems there.

You should be able to compile the kernel for PII and not have problems on
the PIII boxes.  At least compile for 586, sheesh.  :-)

> NIC: Although the GX1's use a 3Com "Cyclone" card and the GX110's use a 3Com 
> "Tornado". they both work with the same driver.

Even if they had totally different NICs you could just compile both into the
kernel and whichever one was there would be found and used as eth0...

> What does concern me is that the GX1's are equipped with two video cards 
> apiece, neither of which matches the single video card in the GX110's.  
> However, each GX1 has a single monitor; I don't know why.  So, on the GX1's, 
> I need to be able to use an different configuration for XFree86 than what 
> the GX110's use, and I need to be sure that the correct video card is used.  
> How do I do that?

Very very carefully...

I *think* you could:
1) Make an XF86Config-4 for the GX1 and copy it to /etc/X11/XF86Config-4.gx1
2) Make an XF86Config-4 for the GX110 and copy it to 
   /etc/X11/XF86Config-4.gx110
3) in /etc/init.d/rc.local put something like:

if /sbin/lspci | grep "Intel Corporation 82810E"; then
  cp /etc/X11/XF86Config-4.gx110 /etc/X11/XF86Config-4
else
  cp /etc/X11/XF86Config-4.gx1 /etc/X11/XF86Config-4
fi

(You'll have to look at the output of /sbin/lspci yourself to figure out
what the right thing that's *different* to check for would be; if you're
really clever you could do a nested if so that if it doesn't look like a
gx110, you check if it looks like a gx1 and if it doesn't look like a gx1
you give it a fairly generic 640x480 VGA configuration.  The "82810E" is
what's in the Dell OptiPlex GX110 I'm sitting at, so that very bit of script
just might work.)
-- 
    Eric Eisenhart   Freedom is slavery.      http://eric.eisenhart.com/
 ^  ICQ#: 48217244   Ignorance is strength.   eric-dot-sig at eisenhart.com
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