Docking

[Gil]

This might be a really stupid question, but...
is it safe to dock/undock without shutdown?
It's a VAIO R505GL.
On the dock I have cd-rom, floppy, usb, serial and parallel port, a bridged network adapter that can be connected to the dock or directly to the machine.

I assume I have to umount floppy and cd-rom if they are mounted.
USB should not be a problem...
So, I'm thinking that, dock/undock would be safe. But I wanna make sure first...

Thanks in advance

[krt]

I've seen various behavior on "docks" (some are just port replicators, i.e. extending the wiring from the chips on your mobo to external ports) to full fledged "smart" docking stations.. complete with pci bus, etc.

Im not sure about hte R505's dock, i.e. how it behaves.. the description on the "buy me, please!" page is a little on the vague side, but what it does say is that it supports hot docking.

http://www.sonystyle.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/eCS/Store/en/-/USD/SY_DisplayProductInformation-Start;sid=tlXfKQ5o3VXfKTAzpWzVIkF4M1DHsCaBx-U=?CatalogCategoryID=NO8KC0%2eNYYwAAADzhgZypn_6&ProductID=nUoKC0%2eNoIAAAADzLHJypn_8

However, this may be through the virtue of some Windows driver. So, some things to do:

backup your data

try an undock operation. If it fails, it fails - it shouldnt damage your hardware. If you're squeemish, make sure that you have a warranty .

Try docking - see what happens. See if you see the disks or not (my guess is that you can undock, then dock, but if you boot up without docking, you wont see the stuff that you'll have in your dock when you do dock.. if that makes sense).

Other things you can try:
enabling hotplug and the varoius hotplug devices in your kernel .. you can read about it here:
http://linux-hotplug.sourceforge.net/?selected=dock

if you're really adventurous, try the 2.5 kernel..
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