Danek Duvall wrote:
>> Network Device Discovery
>> ------------------------
>>
>> Actual network device discovery will be handled by the HAL addon module
>> named hald-addon-network-discovery. This module will be tied into the
>> HAL device tree at /org/freedesktop/hal/devices/network_attached by
>> configuration stored in a HAL configuration file,
>> /etc/hal/fdi/policy/10osvendor/10-network-attached.fdi. At startup,
>> this module will claim the org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.NetworkDiscovery
>>
>
> All these names (as well as the SMF method) don't include "printer" in
> them. Does this mean that they're more generic than that? It seems like
> that might be the case from some of the rest of your material, but it's not
> entirely clear to me.
>
The hald-addon-network-discovery module could be used to detect other
types of network attached devices, like scanners or storage, but it is
specifically looking for printers. The hald-probe-network-printer
module is tied to printers and only looks for printer specific data on
the device it's probing.
> How is this expected to be used in an environment like Sun's, where network
> printers are managed by an IT department and added to the NIS maps?
>
It's not. In a managed environment, like the SWAN, you would probably
turn this off and use the network name service (or discovery method
specific to print queues) to locate existing queues on the network
> Along the same lines, should this project be discovering new printers from
> the NIS map, too (or should there be a project to do so)?
>
We are looking at augmenting the discovery of print queues to support a
more ad hoc mechanism separate from this project.
>
>> HAL device tree at /org/freedesktop/hal/devices/network_attached/{addr}.
>>
>
> Your example gives {addr} as being an IPv4 dotted quad, replacing the dots
> with underscores. Is there any reason to believe that IPv6 devices would
> be discovered and placed here?
There is no reason that IPv6 devices can't be discovered and placed
here. Well, except that I can't seem to find any printers that support
IPv6.
> Is there any sense of a uuid that might
> enable the system to recognize when a printer changes its IP address
> (presumably some use DHCP)?
>
The printers are uniquely identified by a serial number when one can be
retrieved from it. Some of my earlier prototype code generated a unique
ID based on the MAC address when a serial number wasn't available from
the device. I had originally used this unique id instead of {addr} in
the HAL device tree and switched to {addr}. I can see some value in
using something more static than IP addr like MAC addr.
-Norm
