How do I deal with multiple hardware setups?

[Lincoln Peters]

>From: Eric Eisenhart <eric at eisenhart.com>
>Reply-To: <talk at nblug.org>
>To: talk at nblug.org
>Subject: Re: How do I deal with multiple hardware setups?
>Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2001 16:09:24 -0800
>
>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.  :-)

Good idea.  I had been wishfully thinking that eventually, I could make it 
run on some ancient IBM PS/2 systems.  They each have 8MB of RAM, a 486 CPU, 
and an MCA bus.  Yeah, that was definitely wishful thinking.

>
> > 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...

Now that's something I could have guessed.

>
> > 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

It looks to me like every time a workstation started up, it would overwrite 
the XF86Config-4 file with whichever version was appropriate for itself.  
Wouldn't that confuse all of the other workstations whenever they (re)start 
X?

>
>(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.)

lspci is probably what I needed to know.  I'm sure that I can figure out a 
way to keep the configuration for the two cards separate, even if I have to 
mount my boot floppy as /etc/X11 (although I can probably find a better 
way).


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