Early this month I set out to try to
-improve
-the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices. Now my
-prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience. To test
-it, fetch the
-source
-from the Debian Edu subversion repository, build and install the
-package. You might have to log out and in again activate the
-autostart script.
-
-
The design is simple:
-
-
-
-- Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
-hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.
-
-- This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
-from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
-initially did.
-
-- When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
-the APT database, a database
-available
-via HTTP and a database available as part of the package.
-
-- If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
-isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
-plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
-package or packages.
-
-- If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
-aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.
-
-- aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
-package while showing progress information in a window.
-
-
-
-
I still need to come up with a better name for the system. Here
-are some screen shots showing the prototype in action. First the
-notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
-approve all the dependencies. Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.
-
-
-
-
-
-

-
-
The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
-is already useful. The database of hardware to package mappings also
-need more work. It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
-storing such information in the package control file, but could be
-changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
-method. I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
-modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
-as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.
-
-
Update 2013-01-21 16:50: Due to popular demand,
-here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
-'svn checkout
-svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
-hw-support-handler; debuild'. If you lack debuild, install the
-devscripts package.
-
-
Update 2013-01-23 12:00: The project is now
-renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
-subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository. See
-build
-instructions for details.
-