starting Fedora Server SIG

[Bill Nottingham]

Les Mikesell (lesmikesell at gmail.com) said: 
>> HAL is an interface for querying available hardware over the system;
>> it runs on top of d-bus. It's used by things like NetworkManager
>> and anaconda to enumerate devices, and by the desktop systems as the
>> underlying framework for handling PDAs, music players, hotpluggable
>> and removable devices, etc.
>
> I'd really prefer my device names to be predictable.  That is, the NIC  
> in the same motherboard or slot position gets the same eth? name across  
> any number of identical machines, the same controller/cable/drive-select  
> gets the same /dev/sd? name, etc.  Is there still any way to make that  
> happen?

By slot name or motherboard position? Not without custom udev rules,
at this point. The biggest issue is that disk devices you have actual
device nodes, so you can make as many /dev/disk/by-path or by-id or
by-label symlinks that you want, without affecting something that
wants to access it by another name.

Since network devices don't have actual backing device nodes, they
can only be accessed by a single name. Which makes grand unified
device naming schemes for network hard. (Not to mention that attempting
to get consistent motherboard or slot position out of BIOSes across
all manufacturers is a boatload of fun.)

>  > ConsoleKit is a d-bus available daemon that tracks 'sessions' (the
>> combination of a login and a 'seat' - a display/keyboard/mouse combo.)
>> It's done that way because just trawling through utmp isn't the most
>> reliable mechanism. It's used by GDM for tracking who's logged in and
>> providing shutdown/restart functionalty, and by HAL for implementing
>> device access for users logged in on the console.
>
> Anything tied to console logins is almost certainly wrong for unattended  
> servers that may not have anything resembling a console, or unused if  
> they do.

.... wrong? It's not 'wrong', in the same way that tcsh isn't wrong if
you're using bash. If someone's logged in on the console, it will be
recorded that way.

Bill