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* Re: /dev/psaux-Interface
@ 2004-04-21  7:18 Sau Dan Lee
  2004-04-21  7:21 ` /dev/psaux-Interface Kim Holviala
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 26+ messages in thread
From: Sau Dan Lee @ 2004-04-21  7:18 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Kim Holviala; +Cc: linux-kernel

>>>>> "Kim" == Kim Holviala <kim@holviala.com> writes:

    Kim> On Tuesday 20 April 2004 15:56, Dmitry Torokhov wrote:
    >> I think the right way is to fix the issues with psmouse driver
    >> and use input system to tie all hardware together.

    Kim> I agree 100%, and that's why I'm working on the driver. I
    Kim> think the biggest issue right now is the Fujitsu TouchScreen
    Kim> - I'll try to steal one of those laptops from work later this
    Kim> week and maybe come up with a solution. It has a Synaptics
    Kim> touchpad too so I get to test that as well.

So, are  you going to port  my XFree86 driver for  my touchscreen into
kernel space?


-- 
Sau Dan LEE                     李守敦(Big5)                    ~{@nJX6X~}(HZ) 

E-mail: danlee@informatik.uni-freiburg.de
Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 26+ messages in thread
* Re: /dev/psaux-Interface
@ 2004-04-19 13:50 tabris
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 26+ messages in thread
From: tabris @ 2004-04-19 13:50 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Sau Dan Lee
  Cc: Jamie Lokier, Arjan van de Ven, Andrew Morton, Tuukka Toivonen,
	b-gruber, linux-kernel

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 4514 bytes --]

Sau Dan Lee <danlee@informatik.uni-freiburg.de> wrote ..
> >>>>> "Jamie" == Jamie Lokier <jamie@shareable.org> writes:
>
>     >> The input layer tries to do the same wrt HID devices and imo it
>     >> makes sense. Why should userspace care if a mouse is attached
>     >> to the USB port or via the USB->PS/2 connector thingy to the
>     >> PS/2 port.
>
    I'd jump in here at a better point in the thread, but I'm at work right now and this is the only message I can reply to atm...

    I personally have the following problem. I have two mice, one a MS PS/2 Intellimouse. the second, a Logitech optomechanical cordless mouse (and keyboard too) attached via USB (both mouse and keyboard use same receiver as well as USB connection)

    The PS/2 mouse, which requires me to either have the driver built-in, or to manually modprobe, works more or less fine, in both X and console (using GPM). But, my USB mouse, which works fine in X, screws up in console mode. I'm using GPM's repeater function for X.

    Basically what happens is that the USB mouse can move around, but I can't use the buttons. It echoes some of the control codes to my console, and hence makes it useless for cutting and pasting.

    Admittedly, I could just hook up the mouse and keyboard to the PS/2 ports using some adapters, bypassing the USB. and it would probably work. But, why? Why is this broken in 2.6, but not in 2.4?


> Isn't it  possible to use  the PS/2 AUX  port for purposes  other than
> HID?  In 2.4,  /dev/psaux looks like /dev/ttyS1 to  the userspace.  Is
> there a good reason to make them different in 2.6?
>
>
<snip discussion of Modems>
> SEPARATION  of POLICY  and MECHANISM  is an  important concept  in the
> design of unix.
>
>
<snip discussion of graphics cards>
>
>
>     >> Requiring different configuration for both cases, and
>     >> potentially even requiring different userspace applications for
>     >> each type make it sound like abstracting this away from
>     >> userspace does have merit.
>
> You still need to configure your kernel by means of boot parameters or
> module options.  Are users  already complaining about surprising mouse
> sensitivity?  Don't  they need to  tune some parameters to  obtain the
> desired behaviours?  I can't see  how you can do fewer configurations,
> or avoid them at all.
>
>
>     Jamie> I agree in this case: the touchpad should be handled by the
>     Jamie> input layer, for uniformity if nothing else.
>
> But why not do it in a user-space daemon?  GPM has been doing that for
> 10  years already,  and  it has  been  doing it  quite  well.  I  even
> demonstrated to many  people how I configure both a  RS232 mouse and a
> PS/2  mouse to  work in  X at  the same  time, and  those  people were
> surprised that this was even possible.  Thanks to GPM.
    I agree here. Admittedly GPM isn't perfect, and should perhaps be rewritten, but it belongs in userspace.
>
> My philosophy is: if something can be done in userspace, then do it in
> userspace.  Only leave  the essential things in kernel  space.  So, we
> don't have XFree86 in kernel space.  It's not a good idea.
>
> Of  course,  if  performance  is  an issue,  we  may  consider  moving
> something  from userspace  into kernel:  kernel NFS  daemon, firewall.
> Isn't khttpd now removed?  Why?
Because khttpd wasn't that useful, was a bit ugly. Also Tux superseded it. And last of all, most of the stuff that Tux patched to make things faster... were merged into mainline and made available to userspace. So that Apache could do most/all of what Tux could, in userspace, w/ little overhead/cost.
> (But even with knfsd, you still have
> the CHOICE to use a userland nfsd instead.)  I don't believe 'gpm' has
> performance problems -- the mouse port is usally 1200 baud only.
>
>
>     Jamie> However, what happens when the thing connected to the PS/2
>     Jamie> port isn't a mouse or keyboard, just a strange device
>     Jamie> talking bytes?  With 2.4 kernels you could talk to it.
>
> And  now...   it's not  possible  anymore.   Assuming that  everything
> attached to the PS/2 AUX port must be a mouse is a design mistake.  It
> is like assuming that the RS232 port must be attached to a fax-modem.
>
>
>
>
> --
> Sau Dan LEE                     §õ¦u´°(Big5)                    ~{@nJX6X~}(HZ)
>
> E-mail: danlee@informatik.uni-freiburg.de
> Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee
>

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 26+ messages in thread
* /dev/psaux-Interface
@ 2004-02-27 11:45 Bernhard Gruber
  2004-02-27 20:19 ` /dev/psaux-Interface Bernhard Gruber
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 26+ messages in thread
From: Bernhard Gruber @ 2004-02-27 11:45 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: linux-kernel

Hi there,

Story:
As Windows2000 was just so unstable and slow I decided to use Linux on
my Thinkpad 570E. Installation of gentoo was no problem (even if it
took quite long) and I first installed a 2.4.25-kernel. Everything
worked fine there and I could use the trackpoint utilities from Till
Straumann to set the features of the trackpoint. The only problem was,
that ACPI (and APM) did not function properly and so I couldn't get the
current state of the battery (which is quite a large problem for a
laptop). So I tried the 2.6.3-kernel. Apart from minor problems which
could be solved rather quickly I got all devices up and running
including battery monitoring. However, the trackpoint utility did not
work anymore and so the special features like press-to-select and
HARDWARE sensitivity setup do not work until today.

Problem:
As I've read so far, the approach in 2.6.x-kernel was to remove
user-space-drivers as much as possible and one of the consequences was
that the /dev/psaux-Device does not exist as in 2.4.x-kernels. However,
there are some special devices (not only the trackpoint but also
touchscreens for example) which had drivers for 2.4.x-kernels using the
/dev/psaux-interface and most people who programmed those drivers either
don't have the time or don't use/own those devices anymore. Furthermore,
writing kernel device drivers requires more skill and they are harder
to debug. So there's no real hope that they will  ever be ported...

Suggestion:
I would suggest using a /dev/psaux-compatibility option which gives back
the old interface so that these drivers work. This is only meant as a
user-selectable option and I don't think that the new input system
should be changed apart from that! There is already an existing approach
to a kernel patch which can be found here
http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee/fun/psaux/ It can be
integrated easily into the kernel but it seems like there are still bugs
in there. I'm in contact with the author because the trackpoint utilities
creates a segmentation fault when writing to the device but we could not
figure out a solution yet (it’s strange that his touchscreen device
functions without any problems). We are sure that it would not be a huge
problem to solve it for you guys out there, so if anyone wants to help us
please contact b-gruber[at]gmx.de and I’ll send you a more detailed error
report.


PS: Sorry if my english sounds a little bit bumpy sometimes but I don’t
speak english natively.
I would appreciate if you could cc all answers to my Email-adress as I
haven't subscribed to this mailing-list!


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 26+ messages in thread

end of thread, other threads:[~2004-04-22  7:30 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 26+ messages (download: mbox.gz follow: Atom feed
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
     [not found] <Pine.GSO.4.58.0402271451420.11281@stekt37>
2004-04-19  8:35 ` /dev/psaux-Interface Tuukka Toivonen
2004-04-19  8:52   ` /dev/psaux-Interface Andrew Morton
2004-04-19  9:53     ` /dev/psaux-Interface Kim Holviala
2004-04-19 10:16     ` /dev/psaux-Interface Sau Dan Lee
2004-04-19 10:53       ` /dev/psaux-Interface Arjan van de Ven
2004-04-19 11:18         ` /dev/psaux-Interface Jamie Lokier
2004-04-19 11:47           ` /dev/psaux-Interface Sau Dan Lee
2004-04-21 10:48         ` /dev/psaux-Interface Neil Brown
2004-04-21 11:24           ` /dev/psaux-Interface Sau Dan Lee
2004-04-21 11:52             ` /dev/psaux-Interface Tuukka Toivonen
2004-04-21 14:14               ` /dev/psaux-Interface Sau Dan Lee
2004-04-21 12:38             ` /dev/psaux-Interface Neil Brown
2004-04-21 14:21               ` /dev/psaux-Interface Sau Dan Lee
2004-04-20 12:56   ` /dev/psaux-Interface Dmitry Torokhov
2004-04-20 20:41     ` /dev/psaux-Interface Kim Holviala
     [not found]     ` <xb71xmhhmej.fsf@savona.informatik.uni-freiburg.de>
2004-04-21  6:51       ` /dev/psaux-Interface Dmitry Torokhov
2004-04-21  7:15         ` /dev/psaux-Interface Sau Dan Lee
2004-04-22  6:39           ` /dev/psaux-Interface Dmitry Torokhov
2004-04-22  7:06             ` /dev/psaux-Interface Sau Dan Lee
2004-04-22  7:23               ` /dev/psaux-Interface Dmitry Torokhov
2004-04-21  7:18 /dev/psaux-Interface Sau Dan Lee
2004-04-21  7:21 ` /dev/psaux-Interface Kim Holviala
2004-04-21  8:13   ` /dev/psaux-Interface Sau Dan Lee
  -- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2004-04-19 13:50 /dev/psaux-Interface tabris
2004-02-27 11:45 /dev/psaux-Interface Bernhard Gruber
2004-02-27 20:19 ` /dev/psaux-Interface Bernhard Gruber

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