To get Intel ICH8 work with older distributions like centos you have to give kernel couple of parameters:
pci=nommconf all-generic-ide
To get e1000 network adapter to work you have to compile it manually. Download drivers from Intel’s web page.
I noticed nice command today, dmidecode. It tells lots of information about hardware from linux. I.e bios version and what kind of memory the machine uses:
[root@sirius ~]# dmidecode | head -n 13
# dmidecode 2.7
SMBIOS 2.3 present.
51 structures occupying 1436 bytes.
Table at 0x000F2F50.
Handle 0x0000, DMI type 0, 20 bytes.
BIOS Information
Vendor: Award Software, Inc.
Version: ASUS A7A266 ACPI BIOS Revision 1009
Release Date: 10/19/2001
Address: 0xF0000
Runtime Size: 64 kB
ROM Size: 256 kB
The man page tells that you can also find information with prebuild strings like bios-version:
[root@sirius ~]# dmidecode -s bios-version ASUS A7A266 ACPI BIOS Revision 1009
You can also query information with type. Like -t memory etc. Refer to man page.
Nice way to look users who are using too much memory / cpu.
# ps -eo vsize,pcpu,pid,user,args | sort -k 1 -r | head -10
More options from ps manpage.