Kudzu API Documentation

[Paul A. Houle]

On Mon, 6 Jun 2005 21:38:15 -0400, Bill Nottingham <notting at redhat.com>  
wrote:

>
> As for using the API, it's deprecated in favor of HAL for use
> for probing for devices; at this point, it's mainly a layer to
> get the proper modules loaded at boot, and will eventually disappear.
>

	Great,  I've found that one key to a successful Red Hat/Fedora install is

rpm --erase kudzu

	nice to know that you're catching up.

(1) We're about to put a new server in production,  RHEL 4,  and after  
running up2date the system became unbootable,  crashing when kudzu would  
run.  removing kudzu solved the problem.

(2) I've got a home system that would have kudzu waste a great deal of  
time because my toddler would turn the power strips on and off that  
supplied a number of USB devices,  in particular a set of speakers -- each  
time it flipped state,  kudzu would come up and waste a lot of time,   
doing ~something~ that wasn't necessary,  since I've always been able to  
plug and unplug USB devices without any help from kudzu,  hal,  or  
whatever.

(3) I installed RHL 9 for my wife's sister,  and she complained about long  
boot times.  Some investigation turned up a number of useless processes on  
boot that wasted a few seconds each,  and kudzu was the worst of them.

	I think kudzu is particularly intimidating to beginning Linux users --  
Windows and Mac OS don't get into your face with 15 dialog boxes to answer  
because your USB speakers had a hiccup or because your mouse is having  
electrical problems.

	I'd love to see good software for detecting and automatically doing  
something useful with hotplug hardware (say I plug in my digital camera,   
it recognizes the volume id of the flash card and mounts it in a certain  
place),  but seeing how much GUI stuff in RH/Fedora has gone on for years  
in 1/3-2/3rds working states,  everybody being too polite to say the  
emperor has no clothes,  I'm not all that optimistic.