From coreboot

Hardware Database

We need a hardware database because

• we want to be able to tell people
  • whether their system is supported
  • which image is the right one for them
• we need information about the boards out there
  • to see what en vogue boards can easily be ported.
  • to make an estimation how much effort such a port it

Information Gaining

Information we gather from the potential users includes:

• lspci
• lspci -n
• dmidecode
• superio information

Supported Systems

Mick Weiss suggested:

i was thinking a commandline app w/ the parameters --submit-info and if no parameters are given
it checks the info against the info on the site (via XML/RPC)
if it is possible, we could just index a hashed md5 of the pertqanent info of the board (not
something that changes - but identifiable info that doesn't) i.e. RAM wouldn't be a good choice
but say the name of a hw manufacturer + version of their board would be
pseudocode:

  $hash = $hardware_vendor+$board_version;
  send(http://service.openbios.org)->$hash;

then the server queries: SELECT * from hw_table WHERE hash=$hash;
then the server replies:

  if count($hash) == 1 { response($request_ip)->"yes it is supported"; } else {
    response($request_ip)->"sorry buy a decent board: see http:...."
  }

if (count($queried_hash) * typo :)
that db can also be accessable via the web via a search form

my point is that it should just be some unique id
if it is concatenating a bunch of words and numbers, i think a hash would fit as an id (an md5 -
or whatever) is smaller than some url encoded long ass string