Linux is not about choice [was Re: Fedora too cutting edge?]

[Chris Adams]

Once upon a time, David Zeuthen <david at fubar.dk> said:
> 
> On Thu, 2008-01-10 at 12:45 -0600, Chris Adams wrote:
> > And how do you know automatically that one of my USB-to-RS232 adapters
> > is my UPS (should be /dev/ups), one is my GPS (/dev/gps0), and one is a
> > cell phone (/dev/modem)?
> 
> Either we look at the USB device it's hanging off (vendor, product or
> class id's), the driver or we provide a simple interface in
> gnome-device-manager or similar (including command line apps) to set it.

Since they are all USB-to-RS232 adapters, you can't tell anything by USB
info (they are all interfacing to RS232 devices).  Two of them use the
same driver, and annoyingly, the chip vendor for that USB-to-RS232
doesn't set a serial number, so the only way to distinguish them is via
USB port.

Also, some GNOME thing is not a solution, as I'd like my UPS and GPS to
be active on boot (the GPS is used by NTP for clock sync), not some time
later after a user logs in.

> That's the answer to this (very real)
> problem, not a silly program that generates udev rules.

So then we have to have two things running trying to name devices?  I
thought udev was supposed to be "the" solution.  Using udev rules is
easy, it is just that writing them is beyond the point-n-click user.
-- 
Chris Adams <cmadams at hiwaay.net>
Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services
I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.