Kudzu and automatic detection

[Simarjeet Sahni]

On Mon, 6 Dec 2004 11:54:46 -0500, Jeff Spaleta <jspaleta at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 6 Dec 2004 11:13:51 -0500, Dimitrie O. Paun <dpaun at rogers.com> wrote:
> > Of course there is, what do you mean "kudzu properly removes/adds printer".
> > This is silly, once it's added and configured, it shouldn't remove/add
> > it on every reboot!
> 
> If a piece of hardware is no longer available, shouldn't it be unconfigured?
> Certainly you don't want the printer server to pretend a printer is
> available locally when it isn't...that's certaintly not the ideal
> behavior.  In a perfect world... the automation provided in the
> project utopia software stack (udev,hal, etc...) would be able to
> sense the existance of all hardware and automate the configuation and
> unconfiguration as soon as any device is attached or detached. But
> some hardware can't be sensed yet in the scope of the udev/hal
> stack....yet, leaving a place for a boot time hardware
> probing/polling/poking application like kudzu (or discover) to try to
> handle the hardware that can not be sensed inside the project utopia
> stack, in an effort to crudely duplicate what udev/hal would be doing.
> In the perfect solution, unconfiguration wouldn't be limited to
> bootup.. it would happen anytime the device was removed from the
> system. This is what happens when udev/hal works correctly..and what
> kudzu has to try to emulate at bootup.

I agree, the device should be unavailabe if it has been removed,
however, its related user configured properties should not.

> 
> > If I *manually" have to do stuff, it's broken.
> 
> If i have to manually reconfigure settings to suit my prefences...
> things are broken?
> So when I ask gnome to turn my lower panel into a autohiding
> panel...that means gnome is broken? I didn't realize that the computer
> could read my thoughts.
> 

It doesn't need to read my mind, it just needs to not mess with it. If
you manually configure things, you are enforcing your choice on the
system.  So if you have to manually reconfigure the lower panel to
autohide every time you restart gnome, you'd understand the point. 
Your preferences should be held as configuration of choice.

However, going back to the context of the previous comment, manually
starting and stopping system services to limit the systems ability to
manage change is a bad thing.

> The issue isn't whether or not you have to "manually" reconfigure your
> computer to suit your individual preferences. The issue is, does the
> default behavior make sense for the designed for usage case.  I think
> its perfectly reasonable for kudzu to be unconfiguring printers such
> as parallel port printers and other hardware that the project utopia
> stack can not deal with. I think its debatable about whether kudzu
> should be ignoring them or not... but i don't see any broken
> behavior.. i see at most duplication of similar behavior..that is NOT
> causing an operational problem. For usb devices the uptopia software
> stack wll be doing pretty much the same thing... unconfiguration
> printers when not available...configuring printers where then they
> are, but in a more sophisticated way.  I see no brokenness in the
> original post, I see overlapping but yet compatible functionality
> during a transitional period when udev/hal is being introduced into
> the system.
> 

Its perfectly reasonable to expect kudzu or any other service not to
mess with you choices. Your decisions matter more for your system.

-- 
Regards,

Simarjeet Sahni