Smolt

tagline: From openSUSE

According to Smolt Retirement on Fedora project wiki, smolt is no more developed, but there is nothing to replace it (Check links to project that suppose to replace it.)

Smolt is a combined effort of few Linux projects to gather hardware information from computers running Linux.

Privacy: Information collection is voluntary and anonymous.
Smolt program is configured not to run automatically, it must be started manually. When hardware profile is complete, program will present collected information and ask for permission to send it to the smolt server.

1 General
2 Getting Smolt
3 Smolt and openSUSE HCL
4 Edit profile
5 References
6 News
7 See also: External Links

[edit] General

Gathering hardware information in one place is long existing desire in Linux. Smolt is not first attempt, nor only that is currently running, but it is first initiative that is accepted by few major Linux distributions.

Collecting this kind of data as a cross distribution project initiative will result in a huge amount of data which can be used to:

aid developers in detection of computer hardware that is not well supported
focus efforts on popular hardware
provide workarounds and fixes trough tips on Smolt wiki or, in case of openSUSE specific tips, Portal:Hardware.
help users to choose best distribution for their hardware
convince hardware vendors to offer support for their hardware under Linux

[edit] Getting Smolt

It is included in software distribution since openSUSE 11.1.

[edit] Smolt and openSUSE HCL

HCL is acronym for Hardware Compatibility List. That is collection of articles created with intention to inform users how certain type of hardware works driven by openSUSE. Before Smolt introduction adding hardware to the list was task for advanced users that new how to test hardware. Now it is 3 easy steps:

run Smolt and create profile, do this by Alt-F2 and entering smolt, or 'smoltGui' from a command-line.
edit created online profile, to tell which hardware works and to what extent,
publish profile on the wiki

[edit] Edit profile

Password is all that you need to access and edit your Smolt online profile. It is shown after profile is uploaded to the Smolt server. When have it you can edit the information about your hardware specifying what works and what doesn't.

If you forget profile number, or password, run the same command smoltSendProfile again, and they will be printed out. Don't worry about sending profile twice, as Smolt client will remember your profile number, so there will be no 2 profiles for the same machine and same openSUSE installation.

In earlier version smolt-1.1.1.1-56.1 shipped with openSUSE 11.1 the admin password is not displayed in a Smolt Window. To find out the admin password, open a command prompt (console) and run:

 smoltSendProfile

This can be done as a regular user. Once the command finishes you will see the admin password printed out.

The last 3 lines will be something like this:

 To share your profile:
        http://www.smolts.org/client/show/pub_12345678-1234-1234-1234-123456789012 (public)
        Admin Password: xxxxxxxxxxx

Copy and paste link from console to browser, and when web page with your profile is loaded, enter the password.

Be aware that http://www.smolts.org/ is sometimes slow, so don't rush to interrupt it if there is nothing on the screen. If it is unable to upload your hardware profile it will tell you that.