[Pkg-alsa-devel] Bug#240125: The new broken world of 2.6, ALSA, and hotplug.

[Marco d'Itri]

On Mar 31, Theodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu> wrote:

> This is not the only issue.  Hotplug's behaviour also causes problems
> because because it loading every module it can find has all sorts of
> downsides, including drawing too much power: a Mini PCI wireless
> ethernet card, for example.  On airplanes, starting the Mini PCI
> wireless card automatically on boot is also a problem from a
> (perceived) safety point of view, since airplane pilots are worried it
> may cause interference with the plane's systems.
Maybe this kind of devices then need a more accessible knob to enable
and disable them (they should not start transmitting until the interface
is brougth up). We cannot realistically expect users to use modprobe to
control the functionality of a wireless interface.

> Yet another problem with hotplug's current behaivour is that it also
> loads modules which currently mean that suspending the laptop ===
> instant death.
I've never heard before about this kind of modules, looks like these are
candidates for the blacklist. Can you provide me with their names?

> On machines with small amounts of memory, you may also not want to
> load a driver just because it's available; you may want to load it
> only if you're going to need it.
I consider this a special case to be locally handled by the user.
And don't forget that removing modules is kind of deprecated in 2.6
kernels.

> It's not at all clear to me that the hotplug framework is the right
> way to deal with automatically loading modules at boot time.  We have
The Linux hotplugging gurus say so. :-)
Especially after introducing udev, which does not allow loading modules
on demand when the /dev nodes are accessed.

> other schemes, such as /etc/modules, which work just as well, if not
> better.
No, they don't. The problem is that I do not want anymore to explain
users how to find which modules are needed for their network card, AGP
chipset, sound card, etc.

> I think it would make sense if the hotplug package had a debconf or
> /etc/default/hotplug option which allowed the user to choose whether
> or not it should let the hotplug wildly install every single driver it
> can get its hands on with complete abandon --- this is not necessarily
Actually it does (look at the init script), the problem is that postinst
sucks and will overwrite /etc/default/hotplug at every upgrade.
My plan is to kill all debconf questions because they are useless
anyway, but I need to discuss this with the other maintainer.

-- 
ciao, |
Marco | [5472 ad8ykZQp/xB5g]