blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html

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   6     <title>Petter Reinholdtsen: Lets make hardware dongles easier to use in Debian</title>
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  12  <h1>
  13      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  14
  15  </h1>
  16
  17 </div>
  18
  19
  20     <div class="entry">
  21       <div class="title">Lets make hardware dongles easier to use in Debian</div>
  22       <div class="date"> 9th January 2013</div>
  23       <div class="body"><p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
  24 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
  25 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
  26 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
  27 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
  28 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
  29 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
  30 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
  31 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
  32 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
  33 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
  34
  35 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
  36 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
  37 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
  38 simple:
  39
  40 <ul>
  41
  42 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
  43   starting when a user log in.</li>
  44
  45 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
  46   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
  47
  48 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
  49   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
  50   packages.</li>
  51
  52 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
  53   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
  54
  55 </ul>
  56
  57 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
  58 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
  59 discover database to find packages and
  60 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
  61 packages.</p>
  62
  63 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
  64 draft package is now checked into
  65 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
  66 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
  67 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
  68 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
  69 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
  70 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
  71 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
  72 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
  73 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
  74 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
  75 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
  76 because of the freeze).</p>
  77
  78 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
  79 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
  80 inserted):</p>
  81
  82 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
  83
  84 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
  85 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
  86 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
  87
  88 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
  89 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
  90 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
  91 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
  92 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
  93 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
  94 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
  95
  96 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
  97 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
  98 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
  99 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
 100 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
 101 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
 102 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
 103 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
 104 not be installed?</p>
 105
 106 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
 107 please send me an email. :)</p>
 108 </div>
 109
 110       <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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 122 <h2>Archive</h2>
 123 <ul>
 124
 125 <li>2013
 126 <ul>
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