Bug 9215 - HAL should provide USB interface and configuration descriptions
Summary: HAL should provide USB interface and configuration descriptions
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: hal
Classification: Unclassified
Component: hald (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Hardware: All All
: high normal
Assignee: David Zeuthen (not reading bugmail)
QA Contact:
URL:
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Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2006-11-30 17:48 UTC by Alex Kanavin
Modified: 2007-03-24 14:38 UTC (History)
1 user (show)

See Also:
i915 platform:
i915 features:

Attachments
Add support for interface and configuration descriptions provided by USB hardware (3.95 KB, patch)
2007-03-24 09:41 UTC, Alex Kanavin 		Details | Splinter Review
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Description Alex Kanavin 2006-11-30 17:48:26 UTC 
Many USB devices provide textual descriptions for their interfaces and
configurations. Currently HAL ignores them. For example, I have a Nokia 6680
phone which has two OBEX interfaces that provide different services, but the
only way to tell that is to read interface descriptions:

    Interface Descriptor:
      bLength                 9
      bDescriptorType         4
      bInterfaceNumber        4
      bAlternateSetting       0
      bNumEndpoints           0
      bInterfaceClass         2 Communications
      bInterfaceSubClass     11 OBEX
      bInterfaceProtocol      0 
      iInterface              5 SYNCML-SYNC
      CDC Header:
        bcdCDC               1.10
      CDC OBEX:
        bcdVersion           1.00
      CDC Union:
        bMasterInterface        4
        bSlaveInterface         5 
....
    Interface Descriptor:
      bLength                 9
      bDescriptorType         4
      bInterfaceNumber        6
      bAlternateSetting       0
      bNumEndpoints           0
      bInterfaceClass         2 Communications
      bInterfaceSubClass     11 OBEX
      bInterfaceProtocol      0 
      iInterface              6 PC Suite Services
      CDC Header:
        bcdCDC               1.10
      CDC OBEX:
        bcdVersion           1.00
      CDC Union:
        bMasterInterface        6
        bSlaveInterface         7 

From reading the source code, it seems like an easy to fix thing to me. At least
on Linux these descriptions are available as 'interface' and 'configuration'
files in sysfs directories for the USB interfaces and devices respectively. The
specification should be corrected also of course. If you want, I can write the
patch.
Comment 1 Bastien Nocera 2007-02-15 14:57:58 UTC 
That looks like what's needed to support nautilus-sendto on more than just Bluetooth...
Comment 2 Bastien Nocera 2007-02-15 15:20:54 UTC 
See discussions at http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.freedesktop.hal/6679
Comment 3 Alex Kanavin 2007-02-15 15:41:52 UTC 
Actually my idea was to make it possible to do a full phone mount with gnome-volume-manager if it's plugged over USB. This is just the first step towards that :)
Comment 4 Alex Kanavin 2007-03-24 09:41:39 UTC 
Created attachment 9273 [details] [review]
Add support for interface and configuration descriptions provided by USB hardware

So here is the patch that adds support for USB descriptions. I have also modified hal specification to reflect this. I have tested it on Linux and it works fine, but BSD support is untested - it should work though, because was copied from other BSD-specific USB code. Please review and commit.

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