Re: [Astlinux-users] udev vs. hotplug

[Kristian K. <kri...@gm...>]

On 9/10/07, Darrick Hartman (lists) <dha...@dj...> wrote:
>
> devfs was a nightmare.  udev is much better, but still needs to be
> tested for our use.  There were bugs early on.  Most of that (if not all
> of that) has been worked out.
>

  devfs was never an option for AstLinux.  No way!

> If you're looking at this to support firmware, we need to go all the way
> with udev.  The "hotplug" binary is NOT required with the new kernels
> (2.6.14 and higher).  That stuff was a hack.  This page explains the
> details farther:
>
> http://vrfy.org/log/recent-state-of-udev.html
>
> The so called "hotplug" package that is currently in trunk should be
> removed.  It's based on something so old that it does nothing but cause
> confusion/harm.

  I'm a little confused by this...  I am unable to find anything (nor
have I heard of anything) that suggests firmware loading is handled
any differently between 2.6.14 and any other kernel.  I also can't
find anything that says its handled by the kernel at all.

  Just last week I had to load the firmware for a USB DSL modem I was
playing with.  On 2.6.20 it wouldn't work with anything other than
hotplug.  Udev probably would've worked too, if I would have bothered.

  It looks like you still need either udev or hotplug to load firmware.

> I'd say we move on getting udev implemented in trunk after immediately
> creating a 0.5 branch.  udev would then become part of 0.6.  It's a big
> change so we should allow some time to work out the kinks.
>
> Darrick

  If we really need some form of hotplug for firmware loading, I'd
rather do that pre-0.5.  We already include diethotplug - it just
doesn't seem to actually work.  Changing from diethotplug to hotplug
pre-0.5 and then (maybe) moving to udev later sounds best UNLESS
firmware loading can be made to work without either.

-- 
Kristian Kielhofner