Subject: Re: USB feedback wanted
To: Bill Sommerfeld <sommerfeld@orchard.arlington.ma.us>
From: Jonathan Stone <jonathan@DSG.Stanford.EDU>
List: tech-kern
Date: 07/01/1998 07:22:36
>> Point taken. I'll try and get physical location as a locator
>> for USB. A physical location will then be a sequence of 1-5
>> (there is a limit of hub depth to 5) port numbers that tells
>> you how to navigate from the root to the device.
In many environments these "locators' are _ABOSOLUTELY USELESS_, since
whoever builds the NetBSD kernel cannot stop people from changing the
devices. Indeed the natural usage pattern may be that people *do*
change them.
Please make sure everything works if there is at most 1 of each device
class and all bus-topology locators are wildcarded.
>In the config file as:
>
> usbroot* at pci?
> usbhub* at usbroot?
> usbhub* at usbhub?
> usbdev* at usbhub?
>
>And if you need to nail things down more:
>
> usbroot0 at pci?
> usbhub0 at usbroot0
> usbmonitor0 at usbhub0 port 0
> usbhub1 at usbhub0 port 1
> usbkeyboard0 at usbhub1 port 0
> usbmouse0 at usbhub1 port 1
> usbhub2 at usbhub1 port 2
> usbaudio0 at usbhub2 port 0
> usbaudio1 at usbhub2 port 1
Bill, these are *not* nailed down. You can't driven nails into
sand;). Maybe if you have the machine in a physically-secure space or
you can mandate "don't touch the USB", this counts as nailed down.
But that assumption doesn't hold everywhere.
Designing long-lived kernel features around "nailed down" locators
that aren't in fact "nailed down" is just stupid. A USB design that
*requires* these locators be specified (as the above seems to) is
Right Out.