Auto Discover Hardware

judgeJJ · Aug 21, 2014

Was just thinking an auto discover option would be great, to auto detect what hardware you have and select the right options.

awraynor · Aug 24, 2014

Agree with the above. I'm sure it's probably harder than it sounds, but it would be a great addition.

ammulder · Feb 11, 2015

Same here. I'm not sure what would be involved in contributing to the development of such a feature, but I'd be willing to help to whatever extent I can.

I assume it would be a matter of looking at the PCI and USB buses and etc. and looking for identifying information for each device and mapping any recognized ones to an appropriate driver. I've got to imagine all the Linux installers have code for this, so there would be something to refer to.

Maybe as a start it could just pop up some suggestions: "It looks like you have an Intel E1000 network adapter, we recommend the [...] driver"

MacMan · Feb 11, 2015

We've thought about adding this feature and have access to code that will do the hardware scan.

The issue is it can't be enabled by default as not everyone will be running MultiBeast on the system they are installing to. So making it an option opens up to people not using it or using it on the wrong system and it installing kexts that can break the running system.

ammulder · Feb 12, 2015

Well, I can only speak for myself, but...

When I went to do the Yosemite upgrade, I had long since forgotten what motherboard model I have, which audio and network chips it has, which mini-PCI network/bluetooth card I got to replace the default one, etc.

So when my first boot didn't have working network or video, I went into MultiBeast and was at a loss. I figured, well, I'll just pick a few likely-looking things, maybe I remember, whatever. Shouldn't hurt to have an extra unused driver in there, right, because Linux ships with like a million of them, they're just not used if not needed.

Then the system wouldn't boot.

OK, it would boot in safe mode, but when I reran MultiBeast with slimmed-down settings, it didn't remove the kexts it had written before, so it still wouldn't boot.

Then I had to figure out how to get into single-user mode to remove kexts.

Then I had to figure out which kexts to remove.

Then I had to get booted again and run MultiBeast again and look up my old hardware orders on a different computer to figure out what was in the darn thing so I could get the right drivers picked.

Now you can blame me for not doing it "just right" to begin with, but I've installed a lot of OSs and it's been a pretty long time since I've had to manually select the just right hardware. So yeah, you can insist on it, but it's not the user experience I'd have hoped for.

If there was a hardware selector, even if optional ("click here to auto-detect what's on this very machine") it would have saved me a ton of time -- especially since the price of a mistake is so high. I think it would be a big improvement.

And like I said, I'd be willing to help in whatever way I can. If you're not sharing the code, then testing, documentation, whatever.

Thanks!

xxtremepol · Aug 24, 2015

ammulder said:
Well, I can only speak for myself, but...

When I went to do the Yosemite upgrade, I had long since forgotten what motherboard model I have, which audio and network chips it has, which mini-PCI network/bluetooth card I got to replace the default one, etc.

So when my first boot didn't have working network or video, I went into MultiBeast and was at a loss. I figured, well, I'll just pick a few likely-looking things, maybe I remember, whatever. Shouldn't hurt to have an extra unused driver in there, right, because Linux ships with like a million of them, they're just not used if not needed.

Then the system wouldn't boot.

OK, it would boot in safe mode, but when I reran MultiBeast with slimmed-down settings, it didn't remove the kexts it had written before, so it still wouldn't boot.

Then I had to figure out how to get into single-user mode to remove kexts.

Then I had to figure out which kexts to remove.

Then I had to get booted again and run MultiBeast again and look up my old hardware orders on a different computer to figure out what was in the darn thing so I could get the right drivers picked.

Now you can blame me for not doing it "just right" to begin with, but I've installed a lot of OSs and it's been a pretty long time since I've had to manually select the just right hardware. So yeah, you can insist on it, but it's not the user experience I'd have hoped for.

If there was a hardware selector, even if optional ("click here to auto-detect what's on this very machine") it would have saved me a ton of time -- especially since the price of a mistake is so high. I think it would be a big improvement.

And like I said, I'd be willing to help in whatever way I can. If you're not sharing the code, then testing, documentation, whatever.

Thanks!

I couldn´t agree more...

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