blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html

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   6     <title>Petter Reinholdtsen: First prototype ready making hardware easier to use in Debian</title>
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  14  <h1>
  15      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  16
  17  </h1>
  18
  19 </div>
  20
  21
  22     <div class="entry">
  23       <div class="title">First prototype ready making hardware easier to use in Debian</div>
  24       <div class="date">21st January 2013</div>
  25       <div class="body"><p>Early this month I set out to try to
  26 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
  27 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
  28 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
  29 it, fetch the
  30 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
  31 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
  32 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
  33 autostart script.</p>
  34
  35 <p>The design is simple:</p>
  36
  37 <ul>
  38
  39 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
  40 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
  41
  42 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
  43 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
  44 initially did.</li>
  45
  46 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
  47 the APT database, a database
  48 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
  49 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
  50
  51 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
  52 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
  53 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
  54 package or packages.</li>
  55
  56 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
  57 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
  58
  59 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
  60 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
  61
  62 </ul>
  63
  64 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
  65 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
  66 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
  67 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
  68
  69 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
  70 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
  71 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
  72 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
  73 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
  74
  75 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
  76 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
  77 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
  78 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
  79 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
  80 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
  81 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
  82 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
  83
  84 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
  85 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
  86 '<tt>svn checkout
  87 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
  88 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
  89 devscripts package.</p>
  90
  91 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
  92 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
  93 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
  94 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
  95 instructions</a> for details.</p>
  96 </div>
  97
  98       <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/isenkram">isenkram</a>.</div>
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 110 <h2>Archive</h2>
 111 <ul>
 112
 113 <li>2013
 114 <ul>
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 116 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
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