Re: SEUL: Auto-detecting hardware

[Loren S Osborn <lso8219@cs.rit.edu>]

> 
> On Fri, 8 Aug 1997, Greg Fall wrote:
> 
> > I am wondering, what kind of goals are there for auto-detection of 
> > hardware (not trivial or even close, I reckon), and for general 
> > convenience in the initial setup? 
> >
> We should copy redhat's install...  Say I install a soundcard in my
> computer, insmod the appropriate module and give it the location of my
> soundcard.  Say I install an ATAPI cd-rom drive, I just insmod the
> appropriate driver.  They're all compiled already, but as modules and you
> just load the modules you need.  Say I get parallel port zip drive, all I
> gotta do is insmod ppa.o.  TTYL!

Well... this isn't auto-detection.  Auto-detection is using a program to
determine what hardware is installed in the system; NOT JUST installing
drivers for hardware that it's told are installed...

I do think we need auto-detection hardware.  It probably will be the most
technically complex software SEUL will have to develop, and will have to
be VERY carefully written AND extensively tested, because even properly
written auto-detection s/w can crash many systems... Probably we should
map out which auto-detection algorythms crash what boards; and detect for
the boards that will crash other auto-detections first...

BTW.. of course the auto-detection program will HAVE TO run as 'root' because
it will have to bypass all the kernel's h/w protection etc.  

Loren

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