I'm slowly learning a little. Here is as good a discription of
Hotplug as exists now:
Overview
The documentation at this site is, at this writing, mostly addressed to
developers and would-be developers. If you're a user who wants to know
what should I do to set this device up using hotplugging?, the basic
answer is that it should be fully automated already. But it might not
yet be automated, so this site provides information about tools now
available to help you automate it.
In this document, hotplugging is what happens when a user connects
peripherals using connection technologies like USB, Cardbus, IEEE 1394,
and networks. He (or she) connects devices with power on, knowing that
each system can immediately see and use them and expecting that to mean
the device will immediately be usable. Requiring more user input than
just plugging in the device should be avoided in almost all cases.
Closely related is the "cold plugging" problem, which is handling those
same kinds of device connections before the OS is fully bootstrapped (to
multiuser mode). The simple way to handle that problem is to fake
hotplug events that couldn't be handled before hotplugging was running.
When hotplugged devices need to be configured for use during system
booting (such as mounting a root filesystem using a device on USB, such
as a USB disc drive or network adapter) there is a limited-functionality
"diet hotplug" tool available for use with the "initrd" mechanism.
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- Karl Larsen k5di Las Cruces,NM Az ScQRPions -
