Hi On 2015-05-11, Cyril Brulebois wrote: > Hello Stefan, > > Thanks for the write-up, I only had a vague idea of what usb-modeswitch > was, and it helped getting a clear view. [...]
Just to add some further context. Device manufacturers can apply this
modeswitching dance (supported by usb-modeswitch) to just about any USB
device (-class), like scanners/ printers, projectors, smartphones, wlan
cards, etc., but it's most common for 3g, wimax or LTE cards. Looking
through usb-modeswitch-data, I can only identify about half a dozen
USB IDs for USB wlan cards among its database (and none of them belonging
to devices that are still on sale, well perhaps except for one (AVM
FRITZ!WLAN Stick N v2, based on the Ralink RT5572 wireless chipset)).
> [...] It's hard to say anything about a
> potential usb-modeswitch addition (to jessie) without having the work
> done in unstable already, but the extra udeb(s) are indeed somewhat
> worrisome. [...]
usb-modeswitch-data[1] would be required as well - or at least a tiny
excerpt of its USB ID database (unfortunately one can't filter this
for a specific device class, like wlan cards, automatically). So the
potential udeb would either have to ship all USB IDs, or a handcrafted
excerpt of wlan devices[2].
From a purely technical point of view, for the strict subset of already
known wlan cards requiring modeswitching, it might also be possible to
emulate usb-modeswitch by just using /usr/bin/eject (respectively
busybox' corresponding eject applet) on the usb-storage device node.
However this would be quite painful to maintain for Debian/ d-i, but the
list of devices is small, currently not expected to grow (at least not
significantly) and all of the known specimens appear to use
StandardEject=1. I'm strongly recommending against this[3], but it might
be possible to accomplish with some udev rules and a (likely) tiny shell
script - or just executed manually[4] by the affected users.
Regards
Stefan Lippers-Hollmann
[1] Or perhaps usb-modeswitch-data-packed
[2] Or parse usb-modeswitch-data's USB ID database and cross
reference those to the kernel modules - possible, but not pretty.
[3] because of the maintenance effort required for a Debian-only
workaround, something the upstream supported usb-modeswitch
abstracts nicely.
[4] "eject /dev/sdX" on a free tty, where X stands for the usb-storage
device node provided by the wlan card in question.
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