METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR AUTOMATICALLY CONFIGURING COMPUTER SYSTEM HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE

A hardware configuration system for enabling automatic configuration of hardware in a computer system. First, at system ipl, the particular computer system is identified based on its identification number. Then, a specific software component object is instantiated based on the computer system. All of the details of the standard computer system are predefined in the software component object based on supported hardware and peripherals for the specific hardware. Then a test is performed to determine if additional hierarchies are present. Each hierarchy has an associated identification number. If so, then for each hierarchy, the hierarchy is processed as discussed above. The result is a set of instantiated objects completely specifying the hardware environment.