I've just bought an Acer Aspire Revo R3610 "net-top" computer (at only
£160!) with Linpus Linux preinstalled.  Unfortunately, it's only driving
my 1920x1080 Asus VH242H monitor at a resolution of 1024x768, and offers
no higher resolution, despite being connected by HDMI.  I'll replace
Linpus with another distro, but I'd like to do some hardware probing
first.

I downloaded the latest Knoppix (v6.01) and saved it to a flash and booted
from that.  Unfortunately, it's not the Knoppix that I remember from years
gone by.  It seems OK for office apps and simple browsing, but not for
probing the hardware, peripherals and network.  Which live-distro would do
that these days?

-- 
Dave Farrance

On 2009-11-05, Dave Farrance  wrote:
> I've just bought an Acer Aspire Revo R3610 "net-top" computer (at only
> £160!) with Linpus Linux preinstalled.  Unfortunately, it's only driving
> my 1920x1080 Asus VH242H monitor at a resolution of 1024x768, and offers
> no higher resolution, despite being connected by HDMI.  I'll replace
> Linpus with another distro, but I'd like to do some hardware probing
> first.
>
> I downloaded the latest Knoppix (v6.01) and saved it to a flash and booted
> from that.  Unfortunately, it's not the Knoppix that I remember from years
> gone by.  It seems OK for office apps and simple browsing, but not for
> probing the hardware, peripherals and network.  Which live-distro would do
> that these days?

I believe Ubuntu is quite good at detecting hardware.

	Justin.

-- 
Justin C, by the sea.

Dave Farrance  writes:

> I've just bought an Acer Aspire Revo R3610 "net-top" computer (at only
> £160!) with Linpus Linux preinstalled.  Unfortunately, it's only driving
> my 1920x1080 Asus VH242H monitor at a resolution of 1024x768, and offers
> no higher resolution, despite being connected by HDMI.  I'll replace
> Linpus with another distro, but I'd like to do some hardware probing
> first.
> 
> I downloaded the latest Knoppix (v6.01) and saved it to a flash and booted
> from that.  Unfortunately, it's not the Knoppix that I remember from years
> gone by.  It seems OK for office apps and simple browsing, but not for
> probing the hardware, peripherals and network.  Which live-distro would do
> that these days?
> 
I find Fedora 11 pretty good as a live USB distro.

HTH Phil
-- 
Old protocols never die.  They just get migrated over TCP/IP.

Dave Farrance  wrote:

>I downloaded the latest Knoppix (v6.01) and saved it to a flash and booted
>from that.  Unfortunately, it's not the Knoppix that I remember from years
>gone by.  It seems OK for office apps and simple browsing, but not for
>probing the hardware, peripherals and network.  Which live-distro would do
>that these days?

Just to make it clear, I mean a swiss-knife type distro with apps for
probing the hardware, peripherals and network and reporting useful
information rather than the boot-up probing.  Not the distro that I'll
eventually install.

-- 
Dave Farrance

"Dave Farrance"  wrote in message 
news:2g46f5h4gtu90hfl3eg669pbh5dhr6k2rr@4ax.com...
> Dave Farrance  wrote:
>
>>I downloaded the latest Knoppix (v6.01) and saved it to a flash and booted
>>from that.  Unfortunately, it's not the Knoppix that I remember from years
>>gone by.  It seems OK for office apps and simple browsing, but not for
>>probing the hardware, peripherals and network.  Which live-distro would do
>>that these days?
>
> Just to make it clear, I mean a swiss-knife type distro with apps for
> probing the hardware, peripherals and network and reporting useful
> information rather than the boot-up probing.  Not the distro that I'll
> eventually install.
>

http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page

Although I'm not sure if it's got everything you want.

-- 
Geoff

Justin C  wrote:

>I believe Ubuntu is quite good at detecting hardware.

I've just tried that in live-CD mode, and several of the
Menu->System->Admin apps seem to be dysfunctional, i.e. they won't even
start.  Presumably they'd work once the distro was installed to hard disk,
but that's not what I'm after.

-- 
Dave Farrance

"Geoffrey Clements"  wrote:

>> Dave Farrance  wrote:
>>
>>>I downloaded the latest Knoppix (v6.01) and saved it to a flash and booted
>>>from that.  Unfortunately, it's not the Knoppix that I remember from years
>>>gone by.  It seems OK for office apps and simple browsing, but not for
>>>probing the hardware, peripherals and network.  Which live-distro would do
>>>that these days?
>
>http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page
>
>Although I'm not sure if it's got everything you want.

I'll download that and try it tomorrow.  The main thing I'm after is an
app for hardware probing and reporting.  Does it have that?  I don't see
that mentioned on that page.

-- 
Dave Farrance

Dave Farrance  wrote:
> I've just tried that in live-CD mode, and several of the
> Menu->System->Admin apps seem to be dysfunctional, i.e. they won't even
> start.

I have noticed that some distributions do not work on some machines.

It may be necessary to apply the following options, prior to 
installation:

noapic nolapic pci=noacpi

However, this workaround only works about 20% of the time in my 
experience.

>  Presumably they'd work once the distro was installed to hard disk,

Not really. They may not work from the hard drive either.

-- 
Mark Hobley
Linux User: #370818  http://markhobley.yi.org/

Dave Farrance  writes:

> I've just bought an Acer Aspire Revo R3610 "net-top" computer (at only
> £160!) with Linpus Linux preinstalled.  Unfortunately, it's only driving
> my 1920x1080 Asus VH242H monitor at a resolution of 1024x768, and offers
> no higher resolution, despite being connected by HDMI.  I'll replace
> Linpus with another distro, but I'd like to do some hardware probing
> first.
>
> I downloaded the latest Knoppix (v6.01) and saved it to a flash and booted
> from that.  Unfortunately, it's not the Knoppix that I remember from years
> gone by.  It seems OK for office apps and simple browsing, but not for
> probing the hardware, peripherals and network.  Which live-distro would do
> that these days?

How about this?


http://ezix.org/project/wiki/HardwareLiSter

As far as the network goes, what do 

#ifconfig -a 

and 
#lspci 

give you?


atb

Glyn

"Dave Farrance"  wrote in message 
news:0bj6f5pak7ru70kcgqca3d7vjpguhntq4p@4ax.com...
> "Geoffrey Clements"  wrote:
>
>>> Dave Farrance  wrote:
>>>
>>>>I downloaded the latest Knoppix (v6.01) and saved it to a flash and 
>>>>booted
>>>>from that.  Unfortunately, it's not the Knoppix that I remember from 
>>>>years
>>>>gone by.  It seems OK for office apps and simple browsing, but not for
>>>>probing the hardware, peripherals and network.  Which live-distro would 
>>>>do
>>>>that these days?
>>
>>http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page
>>
>>Although I'm not sure if it's got everything you want.
>
> I'll download that and try it tomorrow.  The main thing I'm after is an
> app for hardware probing and reporting.  Does it have that?  I don't see
> that mentioned on that page.
>

I'm not sure, by the time I've checked tonight you'll have probably d/l'd it 
anyway but it's good to have something like this lurking around for when 
things get really borked, it's useful for (*spit*) Windows PCs as well.

-- 
Geoff

On 5 Nov, 12:08, Dave Farrance
 wrote:
> I've just bought an Acer Aspire Revo R3610 "net-top" computer (at only
> £160!) with Linpus Linux preinstalled.  Unfortunately, it's only driving
> my 1920x1080 Asus VH242H monitor at a resolution of 1024x768, and offers
> no higher resolution, despite being connected by HDMI.  I'll replace
> Linpus with another distro, but I'd like to do some hardware probing
> first.
>
> I downloaded the latest Knoppix (v6.01) and saved it to a flash and booted
> from that.  Unfortunately, it's not the Knoppix that I remember from years
> gone by.  It seems OK for office apps and simple browsing, but not for
> probing the hardware, peripherals and network.  Which live-distro would do
> that these days?
>
> --
> Dave Farrance

lspci/ lsusb (or cat /proc/pci etc.) from any boot disk should give
you a good idea of what's in the machine. A small install of distro-of-
choice to a USB stick or bus powered USB drive seems to be the most
useful way to test whether a given machine will work.

FWIW I've got one of these Revos too and having installed Debian Sid
(booted from USB disk and debootstrapped) everything (disk/ USB/
wireless/ bluetooth/ sound/ wired ethernet) apart from graphics works
fine.

The xorg nv in Sid doesn't work with the chipset in these. There are
bugs in Debian bug tracking system and reported upstream. The low res
is because it'll be using xorg vesa - by default it's only offering me
1280x1024 and 1024x768. A small xorg.conf was needed to specify vesa
instead of (not working) nv.

Nouveau is, if I've understood what I've read, able to drive these but
haven't got round to building yet to try it. If it works a sucess
story will get posted some time next week.....

Tim

On 2009-11-05, Dave Farrance  wrote:
> Dave Farrance  wrote:
>
>>I downloaded the latest Knoppix (v6.01) and saved it to a flash and booted
>>from that.  Unfortunately, it's not the Knoppix that I remember from years
>>gone by.  It seems OK for office apps and simple browsing, but not for
>>probing the hardware, peripherals and network.  Which live-distro would do
>>that these days?
>
> Just to make it clear, I mean a swiss-knife type distro with apps for
> probing the hardware, peripherals and network and reporting useful
> information rather than the boot-up probing.  Not the distro that I'll
> eventually install.

I Googled for "linux rescue cd" (without the quotes) and came across
these:

http://www.f-secure.com/linux-weblog/2009/09/22/rescue-cd-311/
http://grml.org/
http://www.cdlinux.info/wiki/doku.php//
http://trinityhome.org/Home/index.php?wpid=1&front_id=12

I don't know if they'll do what you want, but they're more Swiss-Army
Knife than most.

	Justin.

-- 
Justin C, by the sea.

"Geoffrey Clements"  wrote:

>I'm not sure, by the time I've checked tonight you'll have probably d/l'd it 
>anyway but it's good to have something like this lurking around for when 
>things get really borked, it's useful for (*spit*) Windows PCs as well.

Yes. This "System Rescue CD" 1.3.1 has all the usual command-line stuff,
so I can use it to fix partitions etc.  The graphical stuff is very
limited, with hardly any apps, but at least it does have  gtk-lshw (the
graphical version of the hardware probe that Glyn Millington mentioned).
And at least it is possible to boot it into a desktop, on this new machine
of mine with its nVidia ION graphics processor, if Xvesa rather than Xorg
is selected from the X start wizard.

A distro I've found that *would* have been excellent if I'd been able to
start it is Puppy Linux 4.3.1.  This is a small (105Mb) distro that loads
itself entirely into RAM from the CD or flash, and yet manages to have a
whole bunch of X apps including hardware probing and network exploring.
I've tested it on another PC but it crashes on my new machine whether I
choose Xorg or Xvesa.  I guess that the ION GPU is still too new.

I've managed to fix the original issue with Linpus Linux not showing the
full display resolution by modding xorg.conf manually, but I suspect that
the graphics will fight back when I try installing one of the main Linux
distros.

-- 
Dave Farrance

Justin C  wrote:

>I Googled for "linux rescue cd" (without the quotes) and came across
>these:
>
>http://www.f-secure.com/linux-weblog/2009/09/22/rescue-cd-311/
>http://grml.org/
>http://www.cdlinux.info/wiki/doku.php//
>http://trinityhome.org/Home/index.php?wpid=1&front_id=12
>
>I don't know if they'll do what you want, but they're more Swiss-Army
>Knife than most.

Thanks.  I've already spent far more time than I wanted downloading and
testing live distros, but I'm happy with "Puppy", and where that fails,
"System Rescue CD".

-- 
Dave Farrance

"tim.izod@googlemail.com"  wrote:

>FWIW I've got one of these Revos too and having installed Debian Sid
>(booted from USB disk and debootstrapped) everything (disk/ USB/
>wireless/ bluetooth/ sound/ wired ethernet) apart from graphics works
>fine.
>
>The xorg nv in Sid doesn't work with the chipset in these. There are
>bugs in Debian bug tracking system and reported upstream. The low res
>is because it'll be using xorg vesa - by default it's only offering me
>1280x1024 and 1024x768. A small xorg.conf was needed to specify vesa
>instead of (not working) nv.
>
>Nouveau is, if I've understood what I've read, able to drive these but
>haven't got round to building yet to try it. If it works a sucess
>story will get posted some time next week.....

I've just installed Mandriva 2010.0 in a separate partition, and set it up
for dual boot.  I picked Mandriva simply because that's what I've used
before, and since I suspected that I'd be dropped to text mode for a while
then it would be useful to have a distro for which I was familiar with its
command-line package-management and text-console configuration center.

Anyway, Mandriva's install selected the "nv" or "GeForce 6100 and later"
driver and did indeed drop back to text.  I found that "Geforce nouveau
driver experimental" was an option, so I tried that and it locked up.  I
found that the vesa driver allowed me to start X, but the 1920x1080 was
rescaled down to a smaller size box, which looked bad.  I switched back to
"nv", thinking to try altering some of the options, and then it offered me
the option of downloading the proprietary version (I was using Mandriva
Free), so I accepted that.  It downloaded, compiled (evidently not a
binary for some reason) and when I restarted X, all was fine.

I don't know if the h.264 video codec hardware acceleration is working.
I'm having a hard time finding freely downloadable h.264 videos, being
diverted by attack sites and sites scamming payments for royalty-free
videos.

-- 
Dave Farrance