README for the Red Hat Hardware Discovery Tools Version 0.15beta
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Introduction
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This is a quick overview of how to use the Red Hat Hardware Discovery
Tools (hereafter called the 'hwdiag' tools).

First, this is a prelimary release, and we are asking Red Hat users
 to try it and send us their hardware survey results. If you are
fairly confident about the results the program gives you, please send
a report to 'hwsurvey@redhat.com'. We will be creating a database of
hardware which works with Linux. The goal is to make our install
and configuration programs smart enough to recognize your hardware
and install software support automatically.

This data WILL NOT be used for marketing, or sold to advertisers!!
I am a programmer at Red Hat and I am using the information we receive
to make our product smarter.

SOME WARNINGS <- PLEASE READ!!!
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This program actively probes the serial and parellel ports on your computer.
This could cause some adverse side-effects in some situations.
The program checks to see if the port is opened and locked, so it
should not trash a PPP connection, for example.

However, it is possible to tell the program to NOT probe the serial ports.

Serial Probing
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    If you have a serial printer then its possible some trash will be
    printed to the printer when you probe. 

    If you have a UPS, its possible that the serial probing could 
    TURN OFF your UPS.

    In these cases, you should consider telling the hwdiag program to 
    NOT probe the serial ports on your machine.

    In some cases it will say a serial port is 'LOCKED'. This means
    its either a modem which is being used, or a mouse which is
    being used by gpm or X. You will need to kill the process which
    is using the device before it can be probed. You also should
    be careful as to whether you really want to kill that process or not!
    Killing X might not be the best idea if you have other apps open,
    for example.

    The command 'fuser -av /dev/cua0' will tell you which process is
    using the first serial port (/dev/ttyS0). Just substitute in
    the device number which was locked to learn which process is
    the culprit.

Final Notes
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Please send you results to hwsurvey@redhat.com. Make sure you
fill in all the information about PCI devices it may ask you,
otherwise the report is useless to me.

Michael Fulbright
msf@redhat.com

