Be warned: hotplug & coldplug

Message

Doubleletter · Post by **Doubleletter** » Sat Dec 25, 2004 12:28 pm

I just thought I should share a problem I had and how I solved it.

I installed Gentoo 2004.3 from the Universal LiveCD; when I came to the step where the handbook instructs us to: 'emerge coldplug', it gave me an error I didn't understand at that time.

Since my keyboard & mouse wouldn't work without that step I did the next logical thing: 'emerge hotplug'. It worked.

When I booted, all went well: I installed x11, gnome (and did 'emerge world -deep'), etc.

When gnome finished installing, I rebooted, and lo behold my keyboard (USB) wasn't being detected. So I tore out lots of hair before I realised that during 'emerge world --deep' the latest version of hotplug had been installed, in which the HOTPLUG INIT SCRIPTS DO NOT WORK like the old one. You _have_ to install coldplug, and do: 'rc-update add coldplug default'.

So if any of you ever happen to have this problem, there it is.

Good luck.

mbjr · Post by **mbjr** » Sat Dec 25, 2004 8:17 pm

Coldplug worked fine for me today upon new system installation from 2004.3 minimal livecd.

Oh and one more: don't ever use USB if you don't need to

I'm still confused why a keyboard and a mouse need to be connected through USB. This is some madness came from Apple Computers Inc.

But they have special USB plugs, to just be different... but this is another story and probably a flame

so won't bother you with this

The bottom line is that a PS/2 connector should be more than fair enough to connect a kbd or mouse to a box

Daemonax · Post by **Daemonax** » Sun Dec 26, 2004 2:33 am

So we are meant to use coldplug now instead of hotplug? I haven't been keeping up to date on the changes made lately, what makes coldplug different from hotplug?

rhill · Post by **rhill** » Sun Dec 26, 2004 6:06 am

hotplug: automatically detects and (un)loads kernel modules for hardware devices that are (dis)connected while the system is already active. eg. USB printer, plugging in your digital camera or your new mouse you got for xmas and being able to use it right away.

coldplug: automatically detects and loads modules for hardware devices that are already connected when the system becomes active (ie boots). eg. your keyboard, your PCI ethernet card.

hotplug used to also cover for coldplug, loading modules at boot, but that recently changed.

imho, i find it best to build drivers for devices you know you need at boot time directly into the kernel, or use the /etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.6 file to load the modules, and not even bothering to have coldplug at all.

just a tip: you probably want to put coldplug in the 'boot' runlevel rather than 'default'.

mcdermottpa · Post by **mcdermottpa** » Sun Dec 26, 2004 7:27 am

dirtyepic wrote:imho, i find it best to build drivers for devices you know you need at boot time directly into the kernel, or use the /etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.6 file to load the modules, and not even bothering to have coldplug at all.

For what its worth I second this

. If your going to have the device plugged in everytime you press the power button and leave it plugged in until you shutdown modularizing things seems unnecessary.

Daemonax · Post by **Daemonax** » Wed Dec 29, 2004 11:47 pm

So you should have both cold and hotplug installed? And yea just listing modules in modules.autoload.d sounds much better

certocivitas · Post by **certocivitas** » Thu Dec 30, 2004 2:21 am

As I understand it, without coldplug, hotplug will no longer catch usb devices that are plugged in before boot.