[aklug] Check Engine light for linux

This may or may not be implemented as I couldn't find just anyone tool to
do this. But before I throw what may be a pie-in-the-sky idea out there
I'll share what gave me the inspiration:

My 1992 Ford F-250 uses the EEC-IV engine management system with a poor
mans diagnostic trick. After it started to idle roughly and the Check
Engine light came on I googled possible causes and came across this idea.
It had the capability to stick a paper clip in a port and caused the Check
Engine light to blink out a series of trouble codes and giving me a
diagnostic of the problem. Turns out the throttle body had a vacuum leak
and I replaced the gasket. A far-cry from the days of carburetor voo-doo!

Anyway-it isn't so much the idea of sticking a paper clip in a usb port and
have the screen blink out an error code, but of a unified diagnostic
program with all the diagnostic tools for display, drivers, network,
memory, security, file system, etc right at your finger tips. Include some
benchmarking tools to assess the performance of everything: hardware,
software, all. Even take it a step further and include the ability to do an
old school core dump of all the logs in a coherent html format to have on
hand. Windows had a question and answer troubleshooting tool where a
possible problem and solution was offered, and you were asked if that
worked after trying the solution out...something similar can enhance this
tool and make it a true diagnostic that is interactive and useful. And
build this diagnostic out of off the shelf programs (there is a lot out
there-I googled for this fictional diagnostic tool and found stuff like
commands to check the network or scripts to clean out orphaned debs
instead, but it seems they're made for a specific task...they do that task
well.) And have a ncurses based interface so the user can access from
console (ssh to a server scenario comes to mind) and most ncurses apps I've
worked with have a slick interface that is low resource.

If the engineers from 20 years ago recognized the need for a diagnostic
tool on a complex system thats a fuel injection system, surely there is a
need for such a tool on linux systems now. I have used SystemRescue cd and
it did a great job-but it didn't quite go that extra step-a simple unified
interface that anyone (especially of the paper-clip wielding genre) can use
to diagnose their OS and have the report handy to show someone with skill
to help diagnose and repair their issue, after running through some steps
to resolve the issue.

Advantages? Anyone can use it-gurus and noobs alike. It would spare the
retinas of such forum posts like, "I NEED HELP! I cannot boot into my newly
installed buntu..." or "How come I can only get 800x600 res on my 2400x900
display?" What did the Check Engine light program say? The possibilities...

It is entirely possible that this a "out there" and I apologize to those
who's retinas are already achey. :)

-- 
ΨΦ! μ~πζ≈∞Ωא
"Listen to me! When you die in Alaska you die in real life!"
The Other person is never the problem.
"When in charge, ponder. When in doubt, mumble. When in trouble, delegate."
I make chaos
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