From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Message-ID: To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu Subject: Re: [9fans] USB developments From: Richard Miller In-Reply-To: <20040115081637.M4316@cackle.proxima.alt.za> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 09:10:02 +0000 Topicbox-Message-UUID: b8e52846-eacc-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 > My immediate question is whether it makes sense and is even possible > to imitate the behaviour of ip/ipconfig in the case of USB and, in > the instance I have in mind, mount the IDE driver (or the SCSI > driver or the generic "sd" driver, whichever comes closest after > making the necessary adjustments) on the appropriate desired port, > as ipconfig does with etherx and the TCP/IP stack? There's a /dev/sdctl file which appears to be provided just this sort of purpose. But I found with the usb mass storage driver that (nearly) everything can be done quite comfortably outside the kernel. The awkward part of course is hot plugging. I think usbd is already doing all the necessary work of noticing when usb devices come and go. If it communicated this information to the rest of the world with attach/detach messages on a plumbing port, then either individual drivers could watch for their devices appearing, or a "hotplug manager" could load the relevant driver on demand (maybe this could be accommodated within the plumber itself with "plumb start" rules). -- Richard