Mention CONFIG_HOTPLUG=y req when building kernel

[winkie@…]

Currently the user must have hotplugging enabled when building the kernel, but that's not mentioned anywhere. It must be specified that CONFIG_HOTPLUG needs to be enabled when building the kernel in chapter 8.

[Matthew Burgess]

Can someone confirm that this is only applicable to 'unstable' please, as hotplugging has now been removed from 'testing'.

[alexander@…]

This still applies if udev is in testing

[Matthew Burgess]

Thanks Alexander. Just for completeness & my own understanding (which I'll pass on via appropriate text in the book of course) I assume this is required because of udev handling hotplug events, right? If CONFIG_HOTPLUG is 'N' then I'd presume those hotplug events will either not get generated at all, or simply not be sent on to anything outside the kernel? I don't have a 2.6 kernel tarball around at the moment - maybe CONFIG_HOTPLUG's help text is useful here? Would someone mind copying & pasting it here please?

Cheers,

Matt.

[jeremy@…]

You're correct, Matthew. Without hotplug support enabled in the kernel, the signal is never sent to udev to create new device nodes in /dev - this is done by registering udev as the hotplug handler in /proc if the hotplug package is not in place. With the hotplug package in place, hotplug handles that itself.

[Matthew Burgess]

Nominating for the testing branch. This really needs to be documented for _any_ 2.6 + udev release.

[jeremy@…]

This has been noted in Testing. Marking this one resolved.