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  13  <h1>
  14      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  15
  16  </h1>
  17
  18 </div>
  19
  20
  21     <h3>Entries tagged "isenkram".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_with_isenkram_to_install_hardware_related_packages_in_Debian.html">Using appstream with isenkram to install hardware related packages in Debian</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28         20th December 2015
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>Around three years ago, I created
  32 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">the isenkram
  33 system</a> to get a more practical solution in Debian for handing
  34 hardware related packages.  A GUI system in the isenkram package will
  35 present a pop-up dialog when some hardware dongle supported by
  36 relevant packages in Debian is inserted into the machine.  The same
  37 lookup mechanism to detect packages is available as command line
  38 tools in the isenkram-cli package.  In addition to mapping hardware,
  39 it will also map kernel firmware files to packages and make it easy to
  40 install needed firmware packages automatically.  The key for this
  41 system to work is a good way to map hardware to packages, in other
  42 words, allow packages to announce what hardware they will work
  43 with.</p>
  44
  45 <p>I started by providing data files in the isenkram source, and
  46 adding code to download the latest version of these data files at run
  47 time, to ensure every user had the most up to date mapping available.
  48 I also added support for storing the mapping in the Packages file in
  49 the apt repositories, but did not push this approach because while I
  50 was trying to figure out how to best store hardware/package mappings,
  51 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/">the
  52 appstream system</a> was announced.  I got in touch and suggested to
  53 add the hardware mapping into that data set to be able to use
  54 appstream as a data source, and this was accepted at least for the
  55 Debian version of appstream.</p>
  56
  57 <p>A few days ago using appstream in Debian for this became possible,
  58 and today I uploaded a new version 0.20 of isenkram adding support for
  59 appstream as a data source for mapping hardware to packages.  The only
  60 package so far using appstream to announce its hardware support is my
  61 pymissile package.  I got help from Matthias Klumpp with figuring out
  62 how do add the required
  63 <a href="https://appstream.debian.org/html/sid/main/metainfo/pymissile.html">metadata
  64 in pymissile</a>.  I added a file debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml with
  65 this content:</p>
  66
  67 <blockquote><pre>
  68 &lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt;
  69 &lt;component&gt;
  70   &lt;id&gt;pymissile&lt;/id&gt;
  71   &lt;metadata_license&gt;MIT&lt;/metadata_license&gt;
  72   &lt;name&gt;pymissile&lt;/name&gt;
  73   &lt;summary&gt;Control original Striker USB Missile Launcher&lt;/summary&gt;
  74   &lt;description&gt;
  75     &lt;p&gt;
  76       Pymissile provides a curses interface to control an original
  77       Marks and Spencer / Striker USB Missile Launcher, as well as a
  78       motion control script to allow a webcamera to control the
  79       launcher.
  80     &lt;/p&gt;
  81   &lt;/description&gt;
  82   &lt;provides&gt;
  83     &lt;modalias&gt;usb:v1130p0202d*&lt;/modalias&gt;
  84   &lt;/provides&gt;
  85 &lt;/component&gt;
  86 </pre></blockquote>
  87
  88 <p>The key for isenkram is the component/provides/modalias value,
  89 which is a glob style match rule for hardware specific strings
  90 (modalias strings) provided by the Linux kernel.  In this case, it
  91 will map to all USB devices with vendor code 1130 and product code
  92 0202.</p>
  93
  94 <p>Note, it is important that the license of all the metadata files
  95 are compatible to have permissions to aggregate them into archive wide
  96 appstream files.  Matthias suggested to use MIT or BSD licenses for
  97 these files.  A challenge is figuring out a good id for the data, as
  98 it is supposed to be globally unique and shared across distributions
  99 (in other words, best to coordinate with upstream what to use).  But
 100 it can be changed later or, so we went with the package name as
 101 upstream for this project is dormant.</p>
 102
 103 <p>To get the metadata file installed in the correct location for the
 104 mirror update scripts to pick it up and include its content the
 105 appstream data source, the file must be installed in the binary
 106 package under /usr/share/appdata/.  I did this by adding the following
 107 line to debian/pymissile.install:</p>
 108
 109 <blockquote><pre>
 110 debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml usr/share/appdata
 111 </pre></blockquote>
 112
 113 <p>With that in place, the command line tool isenkram-lookup will list
 114 all packages useful on the current computer automatically, and the GUI
 115 pop-up handler will propose to install the package not already
 116 installed if a hardware dongle is inserted into the machine in
 117 question.</p>
 118
 119 <p>Details of the modalias field in appstream is available from the
 120 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a> proposal.</p>
 121
 122 <p>To locate the modalias values of all hardware present in a machine,
 123 try running this command on the command line:</p>
 124
 125 <blockquote><pre>
 126 cat $(find /sys/devices/|grep modalias)
 127 </pre></blockquote>
 128
 129 <p>To learn more about the isenkram system, please check out
 130 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">my
 131 blog posts tagged isenkram</a>.</p>
 132
 133       </div>
 134       <div class="tags">
 135
 136
 137         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
 138
 139
 140       </div>
 141     </div>
 142     <div class="padding"></div>
 143
 144     <div class="entry">
 145       <div class="title">
 146         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html">Debian Jessie, PXE and automatic firmware installation</a>
 147       </div>
 148       <div class="date">
 149         17th October 2014
 150       </div>
 151       <div class="body">
 152         <p>When PXE installing laptops with Debian, I often run into the
 153 problem that the WiFi card require some firmware to work properly.
 154 And it has been a pain to fix this using preseeding in Debian.
 155 Normally something more is needed.  But thanks to
 156 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/i/isenkram.html">my isenkram
 157 package</a> and its recent tasksel extension, it has now become easy
 158 to do this using simple preseeding.</p>
 159
 160 <p>The isenkram-cli package provide tasksel tasks which will install
 161 firmware for the hardware found in the machine (actually, requested by
 162 the kernel modules for the hardware).  (It can also install user space
 163 programs supporting the hardware detected, but that is not the focus
 164 of this story.)</p>
 165
 166 <p>To get this working in the default installation, two preeseding
 167 values are needed.  First, the isenkram-cli package must be installed
 168 into the target chroot (aka the hard drive) before tasksel is executed
 169 in the pkgsel step of the debian-installer system.  This is done by
 170 preseeding the base-installer/includes debconf value to include the
 171 isenkram-cli package.  The package name is next passed to debootstrap
 172 for installation.  With the isenkram-cli package in place, tasksel
 173 will automatically use the isenkram tasks to detect hardware specific
 174 packages for the machine being installed and install them, because
 175 isenkram-cli contain tasksel tasks.</p>
 176
 177 <p>Second, one need to enable the non-free APT repository, because
 178 most firmware unfortunately is non-free.  This is done by preseeding
 179 the apt-mirror-setup step.  This is unfortunate, but for a lot of
 180 hardware it is the only option in Debian.</p>
 181
 182 <p>The end result is two lines needed in your preseeding file to get
 183 firmware installed automatically by the installer:</p>
 184
 185 <p><blockquote><pre>
 186 base-installer base-installer/includes string isenkram-cli
 187 apt-mirror-setup apt-setup/non-free boolean true
 188 </pre></blockquote></p>
 189
 190 <p>The current version of isenkram-cli in testing/jessie will install
 191 both firmware and user space packages when using this method.  It also
 192 do not work well, so use version 0.15 or later.  Installing both
 193 firmware and user space packages might give you a bit more than you
 194 want, so I decided to split the tasksel task in two, one for firmware
 195 and one for user space programs.  The firmware task is enabled by
 196 default, while the one for user space programs is not.  This split is
 197 implemented in the package currently in unstable.</p>
 198
 199 <p>If you decide to give this a go, please let me know (via email) how
 200 this recipe work for you. :)</p>
 201
 202 <p>So, I bet you are wondering, how can this work.  First and
 203 foremost, it work because tasksel is modular, and driven by whatever
 204 files it find in /usr/lib/tasksel/ and /usr/share/tasksel/.  So the
 205 isenkram-cli package place two files for tasksel to find.  First there
 206 is the task description file (/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc):</p>
 207
 208 <p><blockquote><pre>
 209 Task: isenkram-packages
 210 Section: hardware
 211 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
 212  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
 213  proposed.
 214 Test-new-install: show show
 215 Relevance: 8
 216 Packages: for-current-hardware
 217
 218 Task: isenkram-firmware
 219 Section: hardware
 220 Description: Hardware specific firmware packages (autodetected by isenkram)
 221  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific firmware
 222  packages are proposed.
 223 Test-new-install: mark show
 224 Relevance: 8
 225 Packages: for-current-hardware-firmware
 226 </pre></blockquote></p>
 227
 228 <p>The key parts are Test-new-install which indicate how the task
 229 should be handled and the Packages line referencing to a script in
 230 /usr/lib/tasksel/packages/.  The scripts use other scripts to get a
 231 list of packages to install.  The for-current-hardware-firmware script
 232 look like this to list relevant firmware for the machine:
 233
 234 <p><blockquote><pre>
 235 #!/bin/sh
 236 #
 237 PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
 238 export PATH
 239 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
 240 </pre></blockquote></p>
 241
 242 <p>With those two pieces in place, the firmware is installed by
 243 tasksel during the normal d-i run. :)</p>
 244
 245 <p>If you want to test what tasksel will install when isenkram-cli is
 246 installed, run <tt>DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical tasksel --test
 247 --new-install</tt> to get the list of packages that tasksel would
 248 install.</p>
 249
 250 <p><a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> will be
 251 pilots in testing this feature, as isenkram is used there now to
 252 install firmware, replacing the earlier scripts.</p>
 253
 254       </div>
 255       <div class="tags">
 256
 257
 258         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
 259
 260
 261       </div>
 262     </div>
 263     <div class="padding"></div>
 264
 265     <div class="entry">
 266       <div class="title">
 267         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Install_hardware_dependent_packages_using_tasksel__Isenkram_0_7_.html">Install hardware dependent packages using tasksel (Isenkram 0.7)</a>
 268       </div>
 269       <div class="date">
 270         23rd April 2014
 271       </div>
 272       <div class="body">
 273         <p>It would be nice if it was easier in Debian to get all the hardware
 274 related packages relevant for the computer installed automatically.
 275 So I implemented one, using
 276 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">my Isenkram
 277 package</a>.  To use it, install the tasksel and isenkram packages and
 278 run tasksel as user root.  You should be presented with a new option,
 279 "Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)".  When you
 280 select it, tasksel will install the packages isenkram claim is fit for
 281 the current hardware, hot pluggable or not.<p>
 282
 283 <p>The implementation is in two files, one is the tasksel menu entry
 284 description, and the other is the script used to extract the list of
 285 packages to install.  The first part is in
 286 <tt>/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc</tt> and look like
 287 this:</p>
 288
 289 <p><blockquote><pre>
 290 Task: isenkram
 291 Section: hardware
 292 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
 293  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
 294  proposed.
 295 Test-new-install: mark show
 296 Relevance: 8
 297 Packages: for-current-hardware
 298 </pre></blockquote></p>
 299
 300 <p>The second part is in
 301 <tt>/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/for-current-hardware</tt> and look like
 302 this:</p>
 303
 304 <p><blockquote><pre>
 305 #!/bin/sh
 306 #
 307 (
 308     isenkram-lookup
 309     isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
 310 ) | sort -u
 311 </pre></blockquote></p>
 312
 313 <p>All in all, a very short and simple implementation making it
 314 trivial to install the hardware dependent package we all may want to
 315 have installed on our machines.  I've not been able to find a way to
 316 get tasksel to tell you exactly which packages it plan to install
 317 before doing the installation.  So if you are curious or careful,
 318 check the output from the isenkram-* command line tools first.</p>
 319
 320 <p>The information about which packages are handling which hardware is
 321 fetched either from the isenkram package itself in
 322 /usr/share/isenkram/, from git.debian.org or from the APT package
 323 database (using the Modaliases header).  The APT package database
 324 parsing have caused a nasty resource leak in the isenkram daemon (bugs
 325 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/719837">#719837</a> and
 326 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/730704">#730704</a>).  The cause is in
 327 the python-apt code (bug
 328 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/745487">#745487</a>), but using a
 329 workaround I was able to get rid of the file descriptor leak and
 330 reduce the memory leak from ~30 MiB per hardware detection down to
 331 around 2 MiB per hardware detection.  It should make the desktop
 332 daemon a lot more useful.  The fix is in version 0.7 uploaded to
 333 unstable today.</p>
 334
 335 <p>I believe the current way of mapping hardware to packages in
 336 Isenkram is is a good draft, but in the future I expect isenkram to
 337 use the AppStream data source for this.  A proposal for getting proper
 338 AppStream support into Debian is floating around as
 339 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a>, and
 340 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects#SummerOfCode2014.2FProjects.2FAppStreamDEP11Implementation.AppStream.2FDEP-11_for_the_Debian_Archive">GSoC
 341 project</a> will take place this summer to improve the situation.  I
 342 look forward to seeing the result, and welcome patches for isenkram to
 343 start using the information when it is ready.</p>
 344
 345 <p>If you want your package to map to some specific hardware, either
 346 add a "Xb-Modaliases" header to your control file like I did in
 347 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">the pymissile
 348 package</a> or submit a bug report with the details to the isenkram
 349 package.  See also
 350 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">all my
 351 blog posts tagged isenkram</a> for details on the notation.  I expect
 352 the information will be migrated to AppStream eventually, but for the
 353 moment I got no better place to store it.</p>
 354
 355       </div>
 356       <div class="tags">
 357
 358
 359         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
 360
 361
 362       </div>
 363     </div>
 364     <div class="padding"></div>
 365
 366     <div class="entry">
 367       <div class="title">
 368         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_locate_and_install_required_firmware_packages_on_Debian__Isenkram_0_4_.html">Automatically locate and install required firmware packages on Debian (Isenkram 0.4)</a>
 369       </div>
 370       <div class="date">
 371         25th June 2013
 372       </div>
 373       <div class="body">
 374         <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
 375 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
 376 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
 377 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
 378 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
 379 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
 380 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
 381 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
 382 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
 383 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
 384 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
 385
 386 <p><pre>
 387 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
 388 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
 389 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
 390 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
 391 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
 392 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
 393 firmware-ipw2x00
 394 firmware-ipw2x00
 395 Preconfiguring packages ...
 396 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
 397 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
 398 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
 399 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
 400 #
 401 </pre></p>
 402
 403 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
 404 printed instead:</p>
 405
 406 <p><pre>
 407 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
 408 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
 409 #
 410 </pre></p>
 411
 412 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
 413 me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
 414
 415 <p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
 416 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
 417 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
 418 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
 419 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
 420 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
 421 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
 422 <tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
 423 machine.</p>
 424
 425 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
 426 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
 427 finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
 428 #655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
 429 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
 430 from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
 431
 432       </div>
 433       <div class="tags">
 434
 435
 436         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
 437
 438
 439       </div>
 440     </div>
 441     <div class="padding"></div>
 442
 443     <div class="entry">
 444       <div class="title">
 445         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_0_2_finally_in_the_Debian_archive.html">Isenkram 0.2 finally in the Debian archive</a>
 446       </div>
 447       <div class="date">
 448          3rd April 2013
 449       </div>
 450       <div class="body">
 451         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
 452 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
 453 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
 454 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
 455
 456 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
 457 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
 458 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
 459 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
 460 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
 461 BTS. :)</p>
 462
 463       </div>
 464       <div class="tags">
 465
 466
 467         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
 468
 469
 470       </div>
 471     </div>
 472     <div class="padding"></div>
 473
 474     <div class="entry">
 475       <div class="title">
 476         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
 477       </div>
 478       <div class="date">
 479         22nd January 2013
 480       </div>
 481       <div class="body">
 482         <p>Yesterday, I
 483 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
 484 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
 485 pluggable hardware devices, which I
 486 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
 487 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
 488 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
 489 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
 490 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
 491 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
 492 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
 493 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
 494 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
 495 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
 496
 497 <pre>
 498 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
 499 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
 500 </pre>
 501
 502 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
 503 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
 504 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
 505 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
 506
 507 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
 508 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
 509 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
 510 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
 511 word.</p>
 512
 513 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
 514 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
 515 process.</p>
 516
 517 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
 518 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
 519
 520       </div>
 521       <div class="tags">
 522
 523
 524         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
 525
 526
 527       </div>
 528     </div>
 529     <div class="padding"></div>
 530
 531     <div class="entry">
 532       <div class="title">
 533         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">First prototype ready making hardware easier to use in Debian</a>
 534       </div>
 535       <div class="date">
 536         21st January 2013
 537       </div>
 538       <div class="body">
 539         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
 540 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
 541 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
 542 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
 543 it, fetch the
 544 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
 545 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
 546 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
 547 autostart script.</p>
 548
 549 <p>The design is simple:</p>
 550
 551 <ul>
 552
 553 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
 554 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
 555
 556 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
 557 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
 558 initially did.</li>
 559
 560 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
 561 the APT database, a database
 562 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
 563 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
 564
 565 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
 566 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
 567 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
 568 package or packages.</li>
 569
 570 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
 571 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
 572
 573 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
 574 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
 575
 576 </ul>
 577
 578 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
 579 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
 580 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
 581 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
 582
 583 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
 584 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
 585 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
 586 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
 587 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
 588
 589 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
 590 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
 591 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
 592 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
 593 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
 594 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
 595 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
 596 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
 597
 598 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
 599 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
 600 '<tt>svn checkout
 601 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
 602 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
 603 devscripts package.</p>
 604
 605 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
 606 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
 607 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
 608 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
 609 instructions</a> for details.</p>
 610
 611       </div>
 612       <div class="tags">
 613
 614
 615         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
 616
 617
 618       </div>
 619     </div>
 620     <div class="padding"></div>
 621
 622     <div class="entry">
 623       <div class="title">
 624         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_modalias_info_to_find_packages_handling_my_hardware.html">Using modalias info to find packages handling my hardware</a>
 625       </div>
 626       <div class="date">
 627         15th January 2013
 628       </div>
 629       <div class="body">
 630         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
 631 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
 632 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
 633 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
 634 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
 635 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
 636 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
 637 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
 638 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
 639 packages.</p>
 640
 641 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
 642 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
 643 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
 644 modalias.</p>
 645
 646 <p><blockquote>
 647 Package: package-name
 648 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
 649 </blockquote></p>
 650
 651 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
 652 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
 653
 654 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
 655 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
 656
 657 <p><blockquote>
 658 Package: cheese
 659 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
 660 </blockquote></p>
 661
 662 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
 663 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
 664
 665 <p><blockquote>
 666 Package: pcmciautils
 667 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
 668 </blockquote></p>
 669
 670 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
 671 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
 672
 673 <p><blockquote>
 674 Package: colorhug-client
 675 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
 676 </blockquote></p>
 677
 678 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
 679 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
 680 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
 681
 682 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
 683 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
 684 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
 685 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
 686 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
 687 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
 688 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
 689 Raring.</p>
 690
 691 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
 692 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
 693 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
 694 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
 695 try the
 696 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
 697 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
 698 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
 699 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
 700
 701 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
 702 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
 703
 704 <p><blockquote>
 705 % ./hw-support-lookup
 706 <br>yubikey-personalization
 707 <br>%
 708 </blockquote></p>
 709
 710 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
 711 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
 712
 713 <p><blockquote>
 714 % ./hw-support-lookup
 715 <br>pcmciautils
 716 <br>%
 717 </blockquote></p>
 718
 719 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
 720 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
 721 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
 722
 723 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
 724 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
 725 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
 726 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
 727 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
 728 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
 729 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
 730 see if it work.</p>
 731
 732 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
 733 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
 734 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
 735 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
 736
 737       </div>
 738       <div class="tags">
 739
 740
 741         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
 742
 743
 744       </div>
 745     </div>
 746     <div class="padding"></div>
 747
 748     <div class="entry">
 749       <div class="title">
 750         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">Modalias strings - a practical way to map "stuff" to hardware</a>
 751       </div>
 752       <div class="date">
 753         14th January 2013
 754       </div>
 755       <div class="body">
 756         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
 757 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
 758 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
 759 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
 760 in
 761 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
 762 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
 763
 764 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
 765
 766 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
 767 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
 768 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
 769 &lt;URL: <a href="http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device">http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device</a> &gt;,
 770 &lt;URL: <a href="http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c">http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c</a> &gt; and
 771 &lt;URL: <a href="http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup">http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup</a> &gt;.
 772
 773 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
 774 this shell script:</p>
 775
 776 <pre>
 777 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
 778 </pre>
 779
 780 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
 781 using modinfo:</p>
 782
 783 <pre>
 784 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
 785 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
 786 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
 787 %
 788 </pre>
 789
 790 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
 791
 792 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
 793 Bridge memory controller:</p>
 794
 795 <p><blockquote>
 796 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
 797 </blockquote></p>
 798
 799 <p>This represent these values:</p>
 800
 801 <pre>
 802  v   00008086  (vendor)
 803  d   00002770  (device)
 804  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
 805  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
 806  bc  06        (bus class)
 807  sc  00        (bus subclass)
 808  i   00        (interface)
 809 </pre>
 810
 811 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
 812 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
 813 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
 814 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
 815
 816 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
 817 means.</p>
 818
 819 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
 820
 821 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
 822 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
 823
 824 <p><blockquote>
 825 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
 826 </blockquote></p>
 827
 828 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
 829
 830 <pre>
 831  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
 832  p    0001  (device product)
 833  d    0206  (bcddevice)
 834  dc     09  (device class)
 835  dsc    00  (device subclass)
 836  dp     00  (device protocol)
 837  ic     09  (interface class)
 838  isc    00  (interface subclass)
 839  ip     00  (interface protocol)
 840 </pre>
 841
 842 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
 843 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
 844 these alias entries show up:</p>
 845
 846 <p><blockquote>
 847 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
 848 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
 849 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
 850 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
 851 </blockquote></p>
 852
 853 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
 854 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
 855 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
 856
 857 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
 858
 859 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
 860 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
 861
 862 <p><blockquote>
 863 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
 864 </blockquote></p>
 865
 866 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
 867
 868 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
 869
 870 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
 871 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
 872 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
 873
 874 <p><blockquote>
 875 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
 876 </blockquote></p>
 877
 878 <p>The values present are</p>
 879
 880 <pre>
 881  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
 882  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
 883  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
 884  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
 885  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
 886  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
 887  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
 888  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
 889  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
 890  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
 891  ct   10             (chassis type)
 892  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
 893 </pre>
 894
 895 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
 896 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
 897
 898 <pre>
 899   3 Desktop
 900   4 Low Profile Desktop
 901   5 Pizza Box
 902   6 Mini Tower
 903   7 Tower
 904   8 Portable
 905   9 Laptop
 906  10 Notebook
 907  11 Hand Held
 908  12 Docking Station
 909  13 All In One
 910  14 Sub Notebook
 911  15 Space-saving
 912  16 Lunch Box
 913  17 Main Server Chassis
 914  18 Expansion Chassis
 915  19 Sub Chassis
 916  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
 917  21 Peripheral Chassis
 918  22 RAID Chassis
 919  23 Rack Mount Chassis
 920  24 Sealed-case PC
 921  25 Multi-system
 922  26 CompactPCI
 923  27 AdvancedTCA
 924  28 Blade
 925  29 Blade Enclosing
 926 </pre>
 927
 928 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
 929 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
 930 claim it is a desktop.</p>
 931
 932 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
 933
 934 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
 935 test machine:</p>
 936
 937 <p><blockquote>
 938 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
 939 </blockquote></p>
 940
 941 <p>The values present are</p>
 942
 943 <pre>
 944   ty  01  (type)
 945   pr  00  (prototype)
 946   id  00  (id)
 947   ex  00  (extra)
 948 </pre>
 949
 950 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
 951 the valid values are.</p>
 952
 953 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
 954
 955 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
 956 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
 957 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
 958 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
 959 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
 960 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
 961 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
 962
 963 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
 964
 965 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
 966 one can use the following shell script:</p>
 967
 968 <pre>
 969   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
 970     echo "$id" ; \
 971     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
 972   done
 973 </pre>
 974
 975 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
 976 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
 977
 978 <pre>
 979   acpi:ACPI0003:
 980     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
 981   acpi:device:
 982   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
 983   acpi:IBM0068:
 984     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
 985     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
 986     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
 987     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
 988   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
 989     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
 990     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
 991     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
 992   [...]
 993 </pre>
 994
 995 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
 996 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
 997 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
 998 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
 999
1000 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
1001 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
1002 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
1003
1004       </div>
1005       <div class="tags">
1006
1007
1008         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
1009
1010
1011       </div>
1012     </div>
1013     <div class="padding"></div>
1014
1015     <div class="entry">
1016       <div class="title">
1017         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Moved_the_pymissile_Debian_packaging_to_collab_maint.html">Moved the pymissile Debian packaging to collab-maint</a>
1018       </div>
1019       <div class="date">
1020         10th January 2013
1021       </div>
1022       <div class="body">
1023         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
1024 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
1025 Launcher and updated the Debian package
1026 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
1027 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
1028 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
1029 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
1030 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
1031 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
1032 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
1033 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
1034 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
1035 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
1036 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
1037 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
1038 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
1039 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
1040 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
1041
1042       </div>
1043       <div class="tags">
1044
1045
1046         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
1047
1048
1049       </div>
1050     </div>
1051     <div class="padding"></div>
1052
1053     <div class="entry">
1054       <div class="title">
1055         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">Lets make hardware dongles easier to use in Debian</a>
1056       </div>
1057       <div class="date">
1058          9th January 2013
1059       </div>
1060       <div class="body">
1061         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
1062 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
1063 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
1064 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
1065 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
1066 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
1067 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
1068 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
1069 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
1070 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
1071 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
1072
1073 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
1074 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
1075 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
1076 simple:
1077
1078 <ul>
1079
1080 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
1081   starting when a user log in.</li>
1082
1083 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
1084   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
1085
1086 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
1087   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
1088   packages.</li>
1089
1090 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
1091   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
1092
1093 </ul>
1094
1095 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
1096 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
1097 discover database to find packages and
1098 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
1099 packages.</p>
1100
1101 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
1102 draft package is now checked into
1103 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
1104 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
1105 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
1106 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
1107 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
1108 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
1109 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
1110 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
1111 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
1112 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
1113 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
1114 because of the freeze).</p>
1115
1116 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
1117 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
1118 inserted):</p>
1119
1120 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
1121
1122 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
1123 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
1124 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
1125
1126 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
1127 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
1128 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
1129 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
1130 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
1131 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
1132 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
1133
1134 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
1135 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
1136 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
1137 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
1138 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
1139 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
1140 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
1141 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
1142 not be installed?</p>
1143
1144 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
1145 please send me an email. :)</p>
1146
1147       </div>
1148       <div class="tags">
1149
1150
1151         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
1152
1153
1154       </div>
1155     </div>
1156     <div class="padding"></div>
1157
1158     <p style="text-align: right;"><a href="isenkram.rss"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS Feed" width="36" height="14" /></a></p>
1159     <div id="sidebar">
1160
1161
1162
1163 <h2>Archive</h2>
1164 <ul>
1165
1166 <li>2016
1167 <ul>
1168
1169 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/01/">January (3)</a></li>
1170
1171 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/02/">February (2)</a></li>
1172
1173 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/03/">March (1)</a></li>
1174
1175 </ul></li>
1176
1177 <li>2015
1178 <ul>
1179
1180 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/01/">January (7)</a></li>
1181
1182 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/02/">February (6)</a></li>
1183
1184 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/03/">March (1)</a></li>
1185
1186 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/04/">April (4)</a></li>
1187
1188 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/05/">May (3)</a></li>
1189
1190 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/06/">June (4)</a></li>
1191
1192 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/07/">July (6)</a></li>
1193
1194 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/08/">August (2)</a></li>
1195
1196 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/09/">September (2)</a></li>
1197
1198 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/10/">October (9)</a></li>
1199
1200 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/11/">November (6)</a></li>
1201
1202 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/12/">December (3)</a></li>
1203
1204 </ul></li>
1205
1206 <li>2014
1207 <ul>
1208
1209 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/01/">January (2)</a></li>
1210
1211 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/02/">February (3)</a></li>
1212
1213 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/03/">March (8)</a></li>
1214
1215 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/04/">April (7)</a></li>
1216
1217 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/05/">May (1)</a></li>
1218
1219 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/06/">June (2)</a></li>
1220
1221 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/07/">July (2)</a></li>
1222
1223 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/08/">August (2)</a></li>
1224
1225 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/09/">September (5)</a></li>
1226
1227 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/10/">October (6)</a></li>
1228
1229 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/11/">November (3)</a></li>
1230
1231 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/12/">December (5)</a></li>
1232
1233 </ul></li>
1234
1235 <li>2013
1236 <ul>
1237
1238 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
1239
1240 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
1241
1242 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
1243
1244 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
1245
1246 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
1247
1248 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
1249
1250 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (7)</a></li>
1251
1252 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (3)</a></li>
1253
1254 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (5)</a></li>
1255
1256 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (7)</a></li>
1257
1258 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (9)</a></li>
1259
1260 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/12/">December (3)</a></li>
1261
1262 </ul></li>
1263
1264 <li>2012
1265 <ul>
1266
1267 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
1268
1269 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
1270
1271 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
1272
1273 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
1274
1275 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
1276
1277 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
1278
1279 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
1280
1281 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
1282
1283 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
1284
1285 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
1286
1287 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
1288
1289 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
1290
1291 </ul></li>
1292
1293 <li>2011
1294 <ul>
1295
1296 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
1297
1298 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
1299
1300 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
1301
1302 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
1303
1304 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
1305
1306 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
1307
1308 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
1309
1310 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
1311
1312 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
1313
1314 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
1315
1316 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
1317
1318 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
1319
1320 </ul></li>
1321
1322 <li>2010
1323 <ul>
1324
1325 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
1326
1327 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
1328
1329 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
1330
1331 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
1332
1333 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
1334
1335 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
1336
1337 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
1338
1339 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
1340
1341 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
1342
1343 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
1344
1345 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
1346
1347 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
1348
1349 </ul></li>
1350
1351 <li>2009
1352 <ul>
1353
1354 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
1355
1356 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
1357
1358 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
1359
1360 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
1361
1362 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
1363
1364 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
1365
1366 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
1367
1368 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
1369
1370 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
1371
1372 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
1373
1374 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
1375
1376 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
1377
1378 </ul></li>
1379
1380 <li>2008
1381 <ul>
1382
1383 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
1384
1385 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
1386
1387 </ul></li>
1388
1389 </ul>
1390
1391
1392
1393 <h2>Tags</h2>
1394 <ul>
1395
1396  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
1397
1398  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
1399
1400  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
1401
1402  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
1403
1404  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (9)</a></li>
1405
1406  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (15)</a></li>
1407
1408  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
1409
1410  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath (2)</a></li>
1411
1412  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (121)</a></li>
1413
1414  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (154)</a></li>
1415
1416  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
1417
1418  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/dld">dld (15)</a></li>
1419
1420  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (20)</a></li>
1421
1422  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
1423
1424  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (303)</a></li>
1425
1426  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (23)</a></li>
1427
1428  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
1429
1430  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (25)</a></li>
1431
1432  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (9)</a></li>
1433
1434  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (16)</a></li>
1435
1436  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264 (20)</a></li>
1437
1438  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (42)</a></li>
1439
1440  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (11)</a></li>
1441
1442  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (19)</a></li>
1443
1444  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (9)</a></li>
1445
1446  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (8)</a></li>
1447
1448  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd (2)</a></li>
1449
1450  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
1451
1452  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (8)</a></li>
1453
1454  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (37)</a></li>
1455
1456  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software (7)</a></li>
1457
1458  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (273)</a></li>
1459
1460  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (177)</a></li>
1461
1462  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (22)</a></li>
1463
1464  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
1465
1466  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (58)</a></li>
1467
1468  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (92)</a></li>
1469
1470  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
1471
1472  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos (1)</a></li>
1473
1474  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
1475
1476  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (3)</a></li>
1477
1478  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (9)</a></li>
1479
1480  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
1481
1482  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
1483
1484  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
1485
1486  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (45)</a></li>
1487
1488  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
1489
1490  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
1491
1492  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (48)</a></li>
1493
1494  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (3)</a></li>
1495
1496  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (10)</a></li>
1497
1498  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (36)</a></li>
1499
1500  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (2)</a></li>
1501
1502  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix (2)</a></li>
1503
1504  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (8)</a></li>
1505
1506  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (55)</a></li>
1507
1508  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
1509
1510  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (38)</a></li>
1511
1512 </ul>
1513
1514
1515     </div>
1516     <p style="text-align: right">
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