[sane-devel] Hotplug

Karl F. Larsen k5di@zianet.com
Wed, 20 Nov 2002 06:30:06 -0700 (MST)


	I'm slowly learning a little. Here is as good a discription of 
Hotplug as exists now:

Overview

The documentation at this site is, at this writing, mostly addressed to 
developers and would-be developers. If you're a user who wants to know 
what should I do to set this device up using hotplugging?, the basic 
answer is that it should be fully automated already. But it might not 
yet be automated, so this site provides information about tools now 
available to help you automate it.

In this document, hotplugging is what happens when a user connects 
peripherals using connection technologies like USB, Cardbus, IEEE 1394, 
and networks. He (or she) connects devices with power on, knowing that 
each system can immediately see and use them and expecting that to mean 
the device will immediately be usable. Requiring more user input than 
just plugging in the device should be avoided in almost all cases.

Closely related is the "cold plugging" problem, which is handling those 
same kinds of device connections before the OS is fully bootstrapped (to 
multiuser mode). The simple way to handle that problem is to fake 
hotplug events that couldn't be handled before hotplugging was running. 
When hotplugged devices need to be configured for use during system 
booting (such as mounting a root filesystem using a device on USB, such 
as a USB disc drive or network adapter) there is a limited-functionality 
"diet hotplug" tool available for use with the "initrd" mechanism.


-- 
                      
               - Karl Larsen k5di Las Cruces,NM Az ScQRPions -