Hi, On Sat, 25 Apr 2009 00:59:16 +0200 Michael Biebl <bi...@debian.org> wrote:
> Michael Biebl wrote: > > Hi Harry, > > > > I agree with you, that HAL has somewhat grown into a kitchensync > > over its lifetime. Unfortunately it's not easily, if at all > > possible to rip HAL apart in smaller pieces (that's why I mark the > > bug as wontfix). My main concerns are callouts and addons. These are enabled in /usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/10osvendor/*.fdi. So these fdi files could be put in a separate package and people who don't care about this cruft could choose to not install it. There is, however, a much simpler solution: attached you can find fdi files that completely disable addons and callouts. Could you please add them to the package as examples and mention them in README.Debian? Or maybe put them in preferences.fdi as commented out blocks. With these files in place, the only root process remaining is hald_runner. But since all callouts are removed, the risk should be minimised (modulo bugs in hald, like buffer overflows, that could be exploited to invoke hald_runner with arbitrary scripts). > > > > On the other hand, there is work underway to replace HAL with > > something new, more modular, called DeviceKit, where you have > > separate components (e.g. DeviceKit-power, DeviceKit-disks), which > > can be installed separately and will deprecate/replace HAL step by > > step. > > > > See also: > DeviceKit ITP: http://bugs.debian.org/521361 > DeviceKit-power ITP: http://bugs.debian.org/521363 > DeviceKit-disks ITP: http://bugs.debian.org/521364 In my opinion still the wrong approach. Information about hardware should be made available in a file system similar to sysfs, maybe a fuse fs. There's no need for daemons, D-Bus, etc. The interface would then just be regular file operations and notification would be done using inotify. But at least it's an improvement over HAL. Still it will take time until Xorg moves to DeviceKit, if ever. Cheers, harry
99-disable-addons.fdi
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99-disable-callouts.fdi
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