Re: [Xpert]Re: User-level Tasks in Hotplug Scripts?

[jg@pa.dec.com (Jim Gettys)]

Owen:

This is certainly true: but not sufficient...

Here's the sequence as I understand it:

1) new device gets plugged in.
2) system has to figure out what driver to use.
3) if it has seen it before, presumably it can consult some sort of database
   to help hook it up, both by whatever driver parameters it needs, and to hook
   it up to a user level program it activates.  We're done at this point.
4) if the system has never seen it before, we have to somehow ask the user
   what to do.
5) the driver finally gets loaded, with the user specified configuration
   information that might be required.
6) record the necessary driver configuration, and go to 3).

So what we need is a convention whereby the hotplug framework activates
a GUI component talking to the user somewhere on the network to get
the configuration data required, and a way to communicate that configuration
information back to the hotplug system to record for future use (and completion
of the first hot plug event for that device).

So the hotplug scripts (running as root) have to be able to initiate the
GUI talking to the user, and get data back from there.  And it isn't
necessarily on the same system, as hotplug is not all about human interface
devices: it is also used for disk drives, tapes, etc, and eventually pluggable
processors, memory etc.

So we have two problems:
    o A convention of how to know who is administering this system.  It may
    be this is something just for the hotplug folks to worry about.
    o How to securely  get the right configuration back and forth from the user;
this is the authentication problem, in concert with how to get data back
and forth...
                                 - Jim


>
> There's no reason at all that the configuration GUI has to
> automatically have root privileges; I would tend to expect
> something along the lines of:
>
>  A new device "USB Magic Camera" has been detected.
>  Please enter the root password to configure this
>  device:
>            ..............
>
>                             [ Cancel ] [  OK  ]
>
> Regards,
>                                         Owen

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