Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) Website

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The hardware compatibility list (HCL) is a database gathering information about installed computer systems and their working status feedback from users.


It is useful to spot working hardware, or to know what to improve.


Contents

How to use?

How do I register my host configuration?

  • just after the install, the Firsttime wizard provides the possibility to compile and send the configuration report
  • go to the "My hosts" section and follow the instructions at the bottom of the page
  • Run the command hclGUI


How do I remove my host config from the db?

Note that this is still restricted to the Mandriva distribution (unless you port hclcollector to your own - but we might as well decide what reporting tool we are going to use in the future).


How to report problems or requests

The current production release is still a beta, so you have to expect several glitches here and there.


Known issues

The following are known, so please do not report about this for now:

  • it is not yet open
  • it should render fine with Firefox 2 & 3 and Safari 3; IE 7, Opera, Konqueror statuses are unknown (reports welcome); IE6 is not a target anymore;
  • brand, distribution, platform and component information is still rough;
  • it's in English only;
  • it's slow.

Plus:

  • in the "My hosts" section, host components and platform does not display right;

For other issues you may encounter, you may:

  • (really) refresh your cache first;
  • check and open a bug in the Mandriva Bugzilla ("Mandriva web site", "hcl");
  • alternatively sparingly use this section for small, precise issues (but please, use the Bugzilla).


Roadmap

Limited beta - July, 29th 2008

The Mandriva HCL website will available as a beta application during Summer '08.

  • reports compiled by the hclcollector (http://svn.mandriva.com/cgi-bin/viewvc.cgi/soft/hcl/trunk/) are uploaded to the HCL db server (ok)
  • users can report whether their configuration works and how to handle it if necessary (ok)
  • people can search through the database for a particular system / configuration that works with Mandriva Linux
  • people can find most popular / supported systems


Public beta, Sept. 18th

  • we now have alternate commercial name for systems and components
  • we merged brand names and system names (and it is not over, sadly)
  • we can use hclGUI to upload a system report
  • MDV QA Labs start to upload their certifications to HCL - going to replace the old http://www.mandriva.com/hardware database
  • added opensearch descriptor
  • added netbooks category (missing header)
  • search is broken


Next

  • we shall hide systems with no rank/report?
  • we may give the possibility to add captions of systems or devices
  • finally a localized website
  • users can choose to use the expert mode (cooker reporting, component details?)


Beyond / Wish-list

  • handle more than just computer systems: components (we almost have it already, needs use cases) and devices (printers, scanners, etc.); these should come from uploaded info and from manually added items; moreover, comments/ranks should be open to all;
  • wiki integration (all pieces of hardware have a dedicated page on the wiki where users can put their "tips" for using this device);
  • integrate with bugzilla or other services (that is?);
  • it's a complete community project: users help users and almost no need for maintenance (except for bugs and enhancements) (Expert integration?);
  • different layout, more like Google/Amazon search results, and comments, etc.


Extensions:

  • Cross-distribution HCL: it should not be restricted to Mandriva users (requires having a cross-platform reporting tool; should use the hardware4linux one, most likely)
  • improve ranking system by adding two entries to every systems called "power management" and "standby/suspend/hibernate features"


Other HCL databases

There are other useful projects out there:


Docs


How does HCL determine the hardware I'm using?

The software which determines your system's hardware is a Perl script which parses the output of tools dmidecode and lshw and turns them into a collection of XML files. You can see the output of the tools by entering dmidecode or lshw on the command line while running as root. You can also run hclcollector, which will store the data sent to the database in the file /tmp/report.tar.bz2, and then extract the contents of the report with tar -jxvf /tmp/report.tar.bz2

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