blog/data/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.txt

   1 Title: Lets make hardware dongles easier to use in Debian
   2 Tags: english, debian, isenkram
   3 Date: 2013-01-09 15:40
   4
   5 <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
   6 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
   7 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
   8 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
   9 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
  10 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
  11 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
  12 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
  13 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
  14 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
  15 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
  16
  17 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
  18 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
  19 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
  20 simple:
  21
  22 <ul>
  23
  24 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
  25   starting when a user log in.</li>
  26
  27 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
  28   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
  29
  30 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
  31   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
  32   packages.</li>
  33
  34 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
  35   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
  36
  37 </ul>
  38
  39 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
  40 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
  41 discover database to find packages and
  42 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
  43 packages.</p>
  44
  45 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
  46 draft package is now checked into
  47 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
  48 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
  49 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
  50 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
  51 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
  52 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
  53 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
  54 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
  55 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
  56 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
  57 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
  58 because of the freeze).</p>
  59
  60 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
  61 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
  62 inserted):</p>
  63
  64 <p align="center"><img src="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
  65
  66 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
  67 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
  68 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
  69
  70 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
  71 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
  72 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
  73 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
  74 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
  75 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
  76 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
  77
  78 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
  79 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
  80 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
  81 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
  82 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
  83 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
  84 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
  85 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
  86 not be installed?</p>
  87
  88 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
  89 please send me an email. :)</p>