Gentoo Archives: gentoo-user

From: Dale <rdalek1967@×××××.com>
To: gentoo-user@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Re: New xorg.conf with x11-base/xorg-server-1.5.3-r5
Date: Sat, 16 May 2009 18:10:39
Message-Id: 4A0F018F.5060601@gmail.com
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-user] Re: New xorg.conf with x11-base/xorg-server-1.5.3-r5 by Alan McKinnon
1 Alan McKinnon wrote:
2 > On Saturday 16 May 2009 19:14:17 pk wrote:
3 >
4 >> Alan McKinnon wrote:
5 >>
6 >>> I'm not sure who's criticizing DeviceKit, but it isn't me :-)
7 >>>
8 >> I guess it was me... :-)
9 >>
10 >> I find this thread interesting:
11 >> http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xorg/2009-May/045561.html
12 >>
13 >> ...especially this:
14 >> http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xorg/2009-May/045574.html
15 >>
16 >> Which seems like a much more sane way... to me. I don't know what BSD
17 >> and other platforms use (instead of Udev) but I'm sure one could come up
18 >> with a common API.
19 >>
20 >
21 > Sometimes you have to make several horrendous errors to know what to not do
22 > and thereby deduce what you should do - the only version 3 rule of thumb :-)
23 >
24 > From threads involving the hal maintainers I get the idea that the problem is
25 > not so much the idea of hal, but rather it's implementation. And then there's
26 > those fdi files...
27 >
28 > As I see it, at the bottom of the stack you have a kernel and at the top a
29 > user space app (the X server will do for an example). Plug in a USB device
30 > that the app can use, and the kernel needs to make a node in /dev for it if
31 > it's not already there. The kernel should not be interrogating the device for
32 > all possible info - that is expensive - and doesn't need to. It only needs
33 > enough info to know what driver, major and minor numbers to use. X OTOH, can
34 > successfully use much more info. If you have a 19 button mouse, it would like
35 > to know and could even use it as a one-handed keyboard (extreme example). So
36 > the current model uses udev as the interface to the kernel's nodes and HAL as
37 > the interface to exactly what hardware you have. Seems pretty sane for the
38 > most usual use case. At some point in the stack you will need the OS-dependant
39 > part, my guess is the best place is between hal and udev. Only Linux uses
40 > udev, but all OSes use something in that spot. And if not, they have static
41 > nodes.
42 >
43 > Meanwhile we have an acknowledged problem with hal - it's too complex, too
44 > many things have been shoved into it that were never catered for in the
45 > design, configuration is horrific - and the devs are having their usual
46 > spirited debate about how best to approach a solution. This is perfectly
47 > normal and perfectly healthy
48 >
49 >
50
51 I hope someone wins the debate soon and gets this to work and be "user
52 friendly". I'm about to make a fresh backup and try this again. I have
53 upgraded my kernel to a really new version, 2.6.25. Sorry, nvidia won't
54 compile with anything newer that I have tried.
55
56 If it don't work this time, this could end up a with permanent -hal for
57 xorg-server. I quite happy with the way my box works now anyway. ;-)
58 Just trying to keep up with the times I guess.
59
60 < Dale crosses fingers and toes to >
61
62 Dale
63
64 :-) :-)

Replies

Subject Author
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: New xorg.conf with x11-base/xorg-server-1.5.3-r5 bn <brullonulla@×××××.com>