Re: LANANA: To Pending Device Number Registrants

Oliver Neukum
2001-05-17T12:08:10Z

> Since, as Alan mentioned, the lack of device serial numbers for USB mice
> and keyboards means that the only way to implement a relatively stable
> assignment of USB input devices to a quasi-multiuser system with
> multi-headed displays is by paying attention to USB topology, I would
> like us to explore any implementation that includes this support. As
> Linus mentioned, this approach is unreliable, but it's all we have for
> these devices -- Topology can be disturbed by a variety of events
> (plugging a hub into a different host-controller port, etc).

For identifying this is probably the right approach. However identifying is
not enough, as the ioctl discussion has shown. Capabilities are needed. How
can the device registry provide that information ? If we register it together
with the device, we might spend a lot of resources needlessly and can't deal
with devices whose capabilities change dynamically.

In addition how do we export the information ? Proc ? Device nodes (bad for
network devices) ?

Regards
Oliver