Re: [ANNOUNCE] hotplug-ng 001 release

From: Patrick McFarland
Date: Thu Feb 10 2005 - 20:09:44 EST


Greg KH wrote:
I'd like to announce, yet-another-hotplug based userspace project:
linux-ng. This collection of code replaces the existing linux-hotplug
package with very tiny, compiled executable programs, instead of the
existing bash scripts.

It currently provides the following:
- a /sbin/hotplug multiplexer. Works identical to the existing
bash /sbin/hotplug.
- autoload programs for usb, scsi, and pci modules. These
programs determine what module needs to be loaded when the
kernel emits a hotplug event for these types of devices. This
works just like the existing linux-hotplug scripts, with a few
exceptions.

But why redo this all in .c code? What's wrong with shell scripts?
Nothing is wrong with shell scripts, unless you don't want to have an
interpreter in your initramfs/initrd and you want to provide
/sbin/hotplug and autoload module functionality. Or if you have a huge
box that spawns a zillion hotplug events all at once, and you need to be
able to handle all of that with the minimum amount of processing time
and memory.

Wow, thats pretty awesome. Just the other day I said, "Why is hotplug written in sh? Isn't that horribly inefficient way of handling something that needs to be done quickly using the least amount of resources possible?" It seems you were reading my mind.

Please, continue this project and encourage distros to switch to it (when it exceeds hotplug in functionality and stability). Ubuntu currently is trying to reduce boot time, and I bet something like this would factor in (even a few seconds helps).

--
Patrick "Diablo-D3" McFarland || pmcfarland@xxxxxxxxxxxx
"Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd
all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to
repetitive electronic music." -- Kristian Wilson, Nintendo, Inc, 1989
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