<h3>Entries from January 2013.</h3>
+ <div class="entry">
+ <div class="title">
+ <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>
+ </div>
+ <div class="date">
+ 15th January 2013
+ </div>
+ <div class="body">
+ <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
+<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
+values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
+<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
+dongle support in Debian</a>. Using this knowledge, I have tested how
+modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
+to hardware. This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
+packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
+discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
+packages.</p>
+
+<p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
+containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
+the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
+modalias.</p>
+
+<p><blockquote>
+Package: package-name
+<br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
+</blockquote></p>
+
+<p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
+for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
+
+<p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
+cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
+
+<p><blockquote>
+Package: cheese
+<br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
+</blockquote></p>
+
+<p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
+CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
+
+<p><blockquote>
+Package: pcmciautils
+<br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
+</blockquote></p>
+
+<p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
+plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
+
+<p><blockquote>
+Package: colorhug-client
+<br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
+</blockquote></p>
+
+<p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
+file in the Debian archive. Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
+to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
+
+<p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
+announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
+This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
+Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
+hardware mapping are included in the package meta information. I've
+tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
+is working as it should with my prototype. It even made it to Ubuntu
+Raring.</p>
+
+<p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
+the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
+implementation of the lookup code. The idea is to create files for
+each modalias and let the shell do the matching. Please check out and
+try the
+<a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
+shell script. It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
+hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
+repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
+
+<p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
+install yubikey-personalization:</p>
+
+<p><blockquote>
+% ./hw-support-lookup
+<br>yubikey-personalization
+<br>%
+</blockquote></p>
+
+<p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
+propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
+
+<p><blockquote>
+% ./hw-support-lookup
+<br>pcmciautils
+<br>%
+</blockquote></p>
+
+<p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
+<a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
+database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
+
+<p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
+packages and hardware. One source would be to look at packages with
+kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
+extract their modalias information. Another would be to look at
+packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
+/lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
+generate a modalias matching rule. I have not tested any of these to
+see if it work.</p>
+
+<p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
+packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
+machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
+<a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
+
+ </div>
+ <div class="tags">
+
+
+ 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>.
+
+
+ </div>
+ </div>
+ <div class="padding"></div>
+
+ <div class="entry">
+ <div class="title">
+ <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>
+ </div>
+ <div class="date">
+ 14th January 2013
+ </div>
+ <div class="body">
+ <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
+information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
+hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
+to document the details. Here are my findings so far, also available
+in
+<a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
+Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
+
+<p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
+
+<p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
+values stands for. It is in part based on information from
+<URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> >,
+<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> >,
+<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> > and
+<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> >.
+
+<p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
+this shell script:</p>
+
+<pre>
+find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
+</pre>
+
+<p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
+using modinfo:</p>
+
+<pre>
+% /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
+alias: serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
+alias: serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
+%
+</pre>
+
+<p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
+
+<p>A typical PCI entry can look like this. This is an Intel Host
+Bridge memory controller:</p>
+
+<p><blockquote>
+pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
+</blockquote></p>
+
+<p>This represent these values:</p>
+
+<pre>
+ v 00008086 (vendor)
+ d 00002770 (device)
+ sv 00001028 (subvendor)
+ sd 000001AD (subdevice)
+ bc 06 (bus class)
+ sc 00 (bus subclass)
+ i 00 (interface)
+</pre>
+
+<p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
+-n' as 8086:2770. The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
+0600. The 0600 class is a host bridge. Other useful bus values are
+0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
+
+<p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
+means.</p>
+
+<p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
+
+<p>Some typical USB entries can look like this. This is an internal
+USB hub in a laptop:</p>
+
+<p><blockquote>
+usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
+</blockquote></p>
+
+<p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
+
+<pre>
+ v 1D6B (device vendor)
+ p 0001 (device product)
+ d 0206 (bcddevice)
+ dc 09 (device class)
+ dsc 00 (device subclass)
+ dp 00 (device protocol)
+ ic 09 (interface class)
+ isc 00 (interface subclass)
+ ip 00 (interface protocol)
+</pre>
+
+<p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub. Some times the relevant
+class is in the interface class section. For a simple USB web camera,
+these alias entries show up:</p>
+
+<p><blockquote>
+usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
+<br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
+<br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
+<br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
+</blockquote></p>
+
+<p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
+camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
+microphone). Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
+
+<p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
+
+<p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff. This is an IR
+receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
+
+<p><blockquote>
+acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
+</blockquote></p>
+
+<p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
+
+<p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
+
+<p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
+and model. This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
+/sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
+
+<p><blockquote>
+dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
+</blockquote></p>
+
+<p>The values present are</p>
+
+<pre>
+ bvn IBM (BIOS vendor)
+ bvr 1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
+ bd 06/15/2005 (BIOS date)
+ svn IBM (system vendor)
+ pn 2371H4G (product name)
+ pvr ThinkPadX40 (product version)
+ rvn IBM (board vendor)
+ rn 2371H4G (board name)
+ rvr NotAvailable (board version)
+ cvn IBM (chassis vendor)
+ ct 10 (chassis type)
+ cvr NotAvailable (chassis version)
+</pre>
+
+<p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook. Other interesting values can be
+found in the dmidecode source:</p>
+
+<pre>
+ 3 Desktop
+ 4 Low Profile Desktop
+ 5 Pizza Box
+ 6 Mini Tower
+ 7 Tower
+ 8 Portable
+ 9 Laptop
+ 10 Notebook
+ 11 Hand Held
+ 12 Docking Station
+ 13 All In One
+ 14 Sub Notebook
+ 15 Space-saving
+ 16 Lunch Box
+ 17 Main Server Chassis
+ 18 Expansion Chassis
+ 19 Sub Chassis
+ 20 Bus Expansion Chassis
+ 21 Peripheral Chassis
+ 22 RAID Chassis
+ 23 Rack Mount Chassis
+ 24 Sealed-case PC
+ 25 Multi-system
+ 26 CompactPCI
+ 27 AdvancedTCA
+ 28 Blade
+ 29 Blade Enclosing
+</pre>
+
+<p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
+table. For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
+claim it is a desktop.</p>
+
+<p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
+
+<p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs. One example is from my
+test machine:</p>
+
+<p><blockquote>
+serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
+</blockquote></p>
+
+<p>The values present are</p>
+
+<pre>
+ ty 01 (type)
+ pr 00 (prototype)
+ id 00 (id)
+ ex 00 (extra)
+</pre>
+
+<p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver. I am not sure what
+the valid values are.</p>
+
+<p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
+
+<p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
+file2alias.c. There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
+ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
+mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
+vmbus, x86cpu and zorro. I did not spend time documenting all of
+these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
+hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
+
+<p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
+
+<p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
+one can use the following shell script:</p>
+
+<pre>
+ for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
+ echo "$id" ; \
+ /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/ /' ; \
+ done
+</pre>
+
+<p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
+list is very long on my test machine):</p>
+
+<pre>
+ acpi:ACPI0003:
+ insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
+ acpi:device:
+ FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
+ acpi:IBM0068:
+ insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
+ insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
+ insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
+ insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
+ acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
+ insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
+ insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
+ insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
+ [...]
+</pre>
+
+<p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
+packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
+machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
+<a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
+
+<p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
+"find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
+in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
+
+ </div>
+ <div class="tags">
+
+
+ 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>.
+
+
+ </div>
+ </div>
+ <div class="padding"></div>
+
+ <div class="entry">
+ <div class="title">
+ <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>
+ </div>
+ <div class="date">
+ 10th January 2013
+ </div>
+ <div class="body">
+ <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
+for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
+Launcher and updated the Debian package
+<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
+sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in. I
+also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
+hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
+plug in his rocket launcher. In the process I moved the source to a
+git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
+contribute. <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
+is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
+years of relative silence. The new git repository is not listed in
+the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
+bit more before I upload the new version. If you want to check out
+the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
+<a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
+view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
+git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
+
+ </div>
+ <div class="tags">
+
+
+ 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/robot">robot</a>.
+
+
+ </div>
+ </div>
+ <div class="padding"></div>
+
<div class="entry">
<div class="title">
<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>
yubikey-personalization package. The information required to do this
is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
-<p>Many years ago, I proposed to
+<p>Some years ago, I proposed to
<a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
the discover subsystem to implement this</a>. The idea is fairly
simple:
package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
2.2013.01.09 to unstable. I also discovered that the current
-<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover</a>
+<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
/proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present. I ported it to use
libusb as a fall back option to get it working. The fixed package
<div class="tags">
- Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
+ 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/robot">robot</a>.
</div>
<li>2013
<ul>
-<li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (3)</a></li>
+<li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (6)</a></li>
</ul></li>
<li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
- <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (60)</a></li>
+ <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (64)</a></li>
<li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (118)</a></li>
<li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
- <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (167)</a></li>
+ <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (170)</a></li>
<li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (21)</a></li>
<li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (2)</a></li>
- <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (5)</a></li>
+ <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (6)</a></li>
<li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
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