Re: My vision of usbmon

[Greg KH <greg@kroah.com>]

On Sun, Dec 19, 2004 at 11:04:54PM -0800, Pete Zaitcev wrote:
> Hi, Guys:
> 
> This is usbmon which I cooked up because I got tired from adding dbg()'s
> and polluting my dmesg. I use it to hunt bugs in USB storage devices so
> far, and it's useful, although limited at this stage.
> 
> I looked at the Harding's USBmon patch, and I think he got a few things right.
> The main of them is that I underestimated the benefits of placing the special
> files into the filesystem namespace. When we discussed it with Greg in the
> airport, we decided that having some sort of Netlink-style socket would be
> the best option. I decided to make a u-turn and attach those sockets into
> the namespace (currently under /dbg, but it can change). What this buys us is:
> 
>  1. cat(1): never bet against it. It's too handy. And netcat is just
>     not the same.
>  2. USBmon userland in Java. Just try to hack in JNI a little as I have
>     and you'll see.

I agree, file interfaces are just too easy and simple to use.  Sorry for
sending you down the wrong track with the socket stuff.

> The architecture to support various output formats is present. Obvious
> candidates are Old USBmon format and a Binary format. But it's not done.

It looks great, thanks for doing this work.  Let me know when you want
it added to the kernel tree.

thanks,

greg k-h