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6 <title>Petter Reinholdtsen: Using modalias info to find packages handling my hardware</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">Using modalias info to find packages handling my hardware</div>
24 <div class="date">15th January 2013</div>
25 <div class="body"><p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
26 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
27 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
28 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
29 dongle support in Debian</a>. Using this knowledge, I have tested how
30 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
31 to hardware. This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
32 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
33 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
34 packages.</p>
35
36 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
37 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
38 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
39 modalias.</p>
40
41 <p><blockquote>
42 Package: package-name
43 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
44 </blockquote></p>
45
46 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
47 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
48
49 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
50 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
51
52 <p><blockquote>
53 Package: cheese
54 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
55 </blockquote></p>
56
57 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
58 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
59
60 <p><blockquote>
61 Package: pcmciautils
62 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
63 </blockquote></p>
64
65 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
66 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
67
68 <p><blockquote>
69 Package: colorhug-client
70 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
71 </blockquote></p>
72
73 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
74 file in the Debian archive. Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
75 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
76
77 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
78 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
79 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
80 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
81 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information. I've
82 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
83 is working as it should with my prototype. It even made it to Ubuntu
84 Raring.</p>
85
86 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
87 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
88 implementation of the lookup code. The idea is to create files for
89 each modalias and let the shell do the matching. Please check out and
90 try the
91 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
92 shell script. It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
93 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
94 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
95
96 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
97 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
98
99 <p><blockquote>
100 % ./hw-support-lookup
101 <br>yubikey-personalization
102 <br>%
103 </blockquote></p>
104
105 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
106 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
107
108 <p><blockquote>
109 % ./hw-support-lookup
110 <br>pcmciautils
111 <br>%
112 </blockquote></p>
113
114 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
115 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
116 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
117
118 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
119 packages and hardware. One source would be to look at packages with
120 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
121 extract their modalias information. Another would be to look at
122 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
123 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
124 generate a modalias matching rule. I have not tested any of these to
125 see if it work.</p>
126
127 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
128 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
129 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
130 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
131 </div>
132
133 <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>
134
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145 <h2>Archive</h2>
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372
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374
375 </ul>
376
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482 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (10)</a></li>
483
484 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (36)</a></li>
485
486 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (2)</a></li>
487
488 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix (2)</a></li>
489
490 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (8)</a></li>
491
492 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (56)</a></li>
493
494 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
495
496 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (38)</a></li>
497
498 </ul>
499
500
501 </div>
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