On Tue, 30 Jun 2009 14:56:44 +0100
Matthew Garrett <mjg(a)redhat.com> wrote:
ACPI docking stations are mildly complicated creatures that require
the OS to handle part of the undocking process. We're currently doing
this entirely within the kernel, but this has the significant
downside that there's no way to handle cleanly unmounting any block
devices that are contained within the dock - they'll simply vanish.
I've been working with David Zeuthen to flesh out proper desktop
support for this, and we're now at the point where there's not a
great deal of code to write to get this working cleanly.
Unfortunately this requires a certain level of integration between
the kernel and the desktop - something has to prompt the user about
unmounting the device and then trigger the completion of the undock.
The kernel still handles the actual ACPI execution, but policy now
lives in the desktop.
Once this code is ready I'd like to change the kernel defaults to
allow this. The problem is that this will cause a reduction in
functionality for desktops that don't have this integration. How
should this kind of situation be handled?
how common are docking stations in practice?
(as opposed to port extenders)
--
Arjan van de Ven Intel Open Source Technology Centre
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