+ <item>
+ <title>Lets make hardware dongles easier to use in Debian</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Wed, 9 Jan 2013 15:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description><p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
+general, is that there is a great package management system with the
+ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
+from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
+install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
+machine. Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
+Linux distribution. When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
+suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
+I need to talk to it. When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
+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
+<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:
+
+<ul>
+
+<li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
+ starting when a user log in.</li>
+
+<li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
+ hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
+
+<li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
+ database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
+ packages.</li>
+
+<li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
+ package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
+
+</ul>
+
+<p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
+initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
+discover database to find packages and
+<a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
+packages.</p>
+
+<p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
+draft package is now checked into
+<a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
+Debian Edu subversion repository</a>. In the process, I updated the
+<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
+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>
+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
+version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
+because of the freeze).</p>
+
+<p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
+desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
+inserted):</p>
+
+<p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
+
+<p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
+install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
+program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
+
+<p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
+happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
+from hardware to Debian packages. Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
+list the package you would like to have installed when a given
+hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
+reportbug if it isn't. Or, if you know of a better way to provide
+such mapping, please let me know.</p>
+
+<p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
+should be considered before it is ready for production use. Is dbus
+the correct way to detect new hardware? At the moment I look for HAL
+dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
+on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop. Are there better events to use?
+How should the user be notified? Is the desktop notification
+mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
+popup instead? How should packages be installed? When should they
+not be installed?</p>
+
+<p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
+please send me an email. :)</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
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