[gentoo-user] [OT] Linux Live CD to perform hardware audit?

[gentoo-user] [OT] Linux Live CD to perform hardware audit?

[Pandu Poluan]

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Excuse me for starting an off-topic thread,

But do any of you guys/gals know of a Live CD distro that can perform
hardware audit? i.e., detect installed processor model, RAM parameters &
layout, etc.

It's gotta be a Live CD because the boxes currently installed are running
either VMware or XenServer and I am reluctant to open them up. So I guess
I'll just shutdown the box, boot using the Live CD, record all important
info, and reboot into the hypervisor.

Rgds,

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Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Linux Live CD to perform hardware audit?

[Joshua Murphy]

On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 10:58 PM, Pandu Poluan <pandu@poluan.info> wrote:
> Excuse me for starting an off-topic thread,
>
> But do any of you guys/gals know of a Live CD distro that can perform
> hardware audit? i.e., detect installed processor model, RAM parameters &
> layout, etc.
>
> It's gotta be a Live CD because the boxes currently installed are running
> either VMware or XenServer and I am reluctant to open them up. So I guess
> I'll just shutdown the box, boot using the Live CD, record all important
> info, and reboot into the hypervisor.
>
> Rgds,

Pretty much any livecd that'll boot can do the job... lspci -vv,
/proc/cpuinfo, /proc/meminfo, and fdisk -l (which'll catch any drives
the running kernel sees at least) are pretty standard, and it wouldn't
take much to include a script that calls those, dumps the output
somewhere, then reboots. For more extensive info, dmidecode and lshw
tend to give more detail, but are a little less 'standard'. Notably,
dmidecode gives things like per-slot ram information.

-- 
Poison [BLX]
Joshua M. Murphy

Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Linux Live CD to perform hardware audit?

[Andrew Tchernoivanov]

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I use SystemRescueCD and a tool called AIDA. It shows hardware information
in more "friendly"
way by using ncurses. And also there is no need to boot LiveCD itself - it
stars form grub.

On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 9:54 AM, Joshua Murphy <poisonbl@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 10:58 PM, Pandu Poluan <pandu@poluan.info> wrote:
> > Excuse me for starting an off-topic thread,
> >
> > But do any of you guys/gals know of a Live CD distro that can perform
> > hardware audit? i.e., detect installed processor model, RAM parameters &
> > layout, etc.
> >
> > It's gotta be a Live CD because the boxes currently installed are running
> > either VMware or XenServer and I am reluctant to open them up. So I guess
> > I'll just shutdown the box, boot using the Live CD, record all important
> > info, and reboot into the hypervisor.
> >
> > Rgds,
>
> Pretty much any livecd that'll boot can do the job... lspci -vv,
> /proc/cpuinfo, /proc/meminfo, and fdisk -l (which'll catch any drives
> the running kernel sees at least) are pretty standard, and it wouldn't
> take much to include a script that calls those, dumps the output
> somewhere, then reboots. For more extensive info, dmidecode and lshw
> tend to give more detail, but are a little less 'standard'. Notably,
> dmidecode gives things like per-slot ram information.
>
> --
> Poison [BLX]
> Joshua M. Murphy
>
>


-- 
С уважением,
Черноиванов Андрей

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Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Linux Live CD to perform hardware audit?

[Pandu Poluan]

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On Feb 9, 2012 12:58 PM, "Joshua Murphy" <poisonbl@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 10:58 PM, Pandu Poluan <pandu@poluan.info> wrote:
> > Excuse me for starting an off-topic thread,
> >
> > But do any of you guys/gals know of a Live CD distro that can perform
> > hardware audit? i.e., detect installed processor model, RAM parameters &
> > layout, etc.
> >
> > It's gotta be a Live CD because the boxes currently installed are
running
> > either VMware or XenServer and I am reluctant to open them up. So I
guess
> > I'll just shutdown the box, boot using the Live CD, record all important
> > info, and reboot into the hypervisor.
> >
> > Rgds,
>
> Pretty much any livecd that'll boot can do the job... lspci -vv,
> /proc/cpuinfo, /proc/meminfo, and fdisk -l (which'll catch any drives
> the running kernel sees at least) are pretty standard, and it wouldn't
> take much to include a script that calls those, dumps the output
> somewhere, then reboots. For more extensive info, dmidecode and lshw
> tend to give more detail, but are a little less 'standard'. Notably,
> dmidecode gives things like per-slot ram information.
>

Well, I need that kind of information, so I guess I'll have to go
"non-standard" :-)

Rgds,

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Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Linux Live CD to perform hardware audit?

[Pandu Poluan]

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On Feb 9, 2012 1:50 PM, "Andrew Tchernoivanov" <tchernoivanov@gmail.com>
wrote:
>
> I use SystemRescueCD and a tool called AIDA. It shows hardware
information in more "friendly"
> way by using ncurses. And also there is no need to boot LiveCD itself -
it stars form grub.
>

Ah, thank you!

I'll still burn a CD, though. Much easier to reboot from a CD than having
to edit grub in 10+ boxes.

Rgds,

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Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Linux Live CD to perform hardware audit?

[Andrew Tchernoivanov]

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On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 11:08 AM, Pandu Poluan <pandu@poluan.info> wrote:

> Ah, thank you!
>
> I'll still burn a CD, though. Much easier to reboot from a CD than having
> to edit grub in 10+ boxes.
>
> Rgds,
>

You could also use unetbootin to make bootable USB-stick.

-- 
С уважением,
Черноиванов Андрей

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Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Linux Live CD to perform hardware audit?

[Pandu Poluan]

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On Feb 9, 2012 2:29 PM, "Andrew Tchernoivanov" <tchernoivanov@gmail.com>
wrote:
>
>
>
> On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 11:08 AM, Pandu Poluan <pandu@poluan.info> wrote:
>>
>> Ah, thank you!
>>
>> I'll still burn a CD, though. Much easier to reboot from a CD than
having to edit grub in 10+ boxes.
>>
>> Rgds,
>
>
> You could also use unetbootin to make bootable USB-stick.
>

Some of my boxes for strange reasons refuse to boot from USB. Rather than
troubleshooting, I chose the easy way out ;-)

Rgds,

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Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Linux Live CD to perform hardware audit?

[Michael Hampicke]

> But do any of you guys/gals know of a Live CD distro that can perform
> hardware audit? i.e., detect installed processor model, RAM parameters &
> layout, etc.

Some days ago I was using the parted magic live cd [1]. It had a tool
that listed all hardware in a nice fashion. I don't recall it's name -
but looking at the list of programs that come with parted magic [2] I
guess it was hardinfo.

[1] http://partedmagic.com/
[2] http://partedmagic.com/doku.php?id=programs

Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Linux Live CD to perform hardware audit?

[Alan McKinnon]

On Thu, 9 Feb 2012 00:54:19 -0500
Joshua Murphy <poisonbl@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 10:58 PM, Pandu Poluan <pandu@poluan.info>
> wrote:
> > Excuse me for starting an off-topic thread,
> >
> > But do any of you guys/gals know of a Live CD distro that can
> > perform hardware audit? i.e., detect installed processor model, RAM
> > parameters & layout, etc.
> >
> > It's gotta be a Live CD because the boxes currently installed are
> > running either VMware or XenServer and I am reluctant to open them
> > up. So I guess I'll just shutdown the box, boot using the Live CD,
> > record all important info, and reboot into the hypervisor.
> >
> > Rgds,
> 
> Pretty much any livecd that'll boot can do the job... lspci -vv,
> /proc/cpuinfo, /proc/meminfo, and fdisk -l (which'll catch any drives
> the running kernel sees at least) are pretty standard, and it wouldn't
> take much to include a script that calls those, dumps the output
> somewhere, then reboots. For more extensive info, dmidecode and lshw
> tend to give more detail, but are a little less 'standard'. Notably,
> dmidecode gives things like per-slot ram information.
> 

Software does indeed make this process so much easier. We use dmidecode for this too.

All the machines in the data center run ocsng
(http://www.ocsinventory-ng.org) to automate the entire process, but
that's way beyond what the OP needs

-- 
Alan McKinnnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Linux Live CD to perform hardware audit?

[Paul Hartman]

On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 2:22 AM, Michael Hampicke <gentoo-user@hadt.biz> wrote:
>> But do any of you guys/gals know of a Live CD distro that can perform
>> hardware audit? i.e., detect installed processor model, RAM parameters &
>> layout, etc.
>
> Some days ago I was using the parted magic live cd [1]. It had a tool
> that listed all hardware in a nice fashion. I don't recall it's name -
> but looking at the list of programs that come with parted magic [2] I
> guess it was hardinfo.
>
> [1] http://partedmagic.com/
> [2] http://partedmagic.com/doku.php?id=programs

I'll give another vote for partedmagic, aside from running gparted
it's also got some good general-purpose tools. It also loads itself
into RAM and ejects the disc once it's loaded, so if you're using it
on multiple machines you can use one disc to load them all at once.

Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Linux Live CD to perform hardware audit?

[Pandu Poluan]

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On Feb 9, 2012 10:18 PM, "Paul Hartman" <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com>
wrote:
>
> On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 2:22 AM, Michael Hampicke <gentoo-user@hadt.biz>
wrote:
> >> But do any of you guys/gals know of a Live CD distro that can perform
> >> hardware audit? i.e., detect installed processor model, RAM parameters
&
> >> layout, etc.
> >
> > Some days ago I was using the parted magic live cd [1]. It had a tool
> > that listed all hardware in a nice fashion. I don't recall it's name -
> > but looking at the list of programs that come with parted magic [2] I
> > guess it was hardinfo.
> >
> > [1] http://partedmagic.com/
> > [2] http://partedmagic.com/doku.php?id=programs
>
> I'll give another vote for partedmagic, aside from running gparted
> it's also got some good general-purpose tools. It also loads itself
> into RAM and ejects the disc once it's loaded, so if you're using it
> on multiple machines you can use one disc to load them all at once.
>

Although a nice benefit, I think I'm going to do it the old way... after
all, everytime I have to shutdown a box, I have to first migrate the VMs
within to another host. So, no chance to shut them all at the same time.

Rgds,

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