Plug-And-Play (Hot-Pluggable) Devices

We are now accustomed to (un)plug devices into computers while they are running and to expect them to be immediately detected and usable (i.e., without rebooting). For instance input devices (keyboards, mice, joysticks, etc.) or mass storages. The operating system has to signal when a new device becomes available or unavailable.

Linux loads some drivers asynchronously to speed up the boot. Hence devices handled by these drivers are detected after the boot as if they had just been plugged in.

haskus-system provides an interface to receive events when the state of the device tree changes. The following code shows how to get and print these events:

{-# LANGUAGE BlockArguments #-}

import Haskus.System

main :: IO ()
main = runSys do

   term <- defaultTerminal
   sys  <- defaultSystemInit
   let dm = systemDeviceManager sys

   -- Display kernel events
   onEvent (dmEvents dm) \ev ->
      writeStrLn term (show ev)

   waitForKey term
   powerOff

If you execute this code in QEMU, you should get something similar to:

-- Formatting has been enhanced for readability
KernelEvent
   { kernelEventAction = ActionAdd
   , kernelEventDevPath = "/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/input/input3"
   , kernelEventSubSystem = "input"
   , kernelEventDetails = fromList
      [("EV","7")
      ,("KEY","1f0000 0 0 00")
      ,("MODALIAS","input:b0011v0002p0006e0000-e0,...,8,amlsfw")
      ,("NAME","\"ImExPS/2Generic ExplorerMouse\"")
      ,("PHYS","\"isa0060/serio1/input0\"")
      ,("PRODUCT","11/2/6/0")
      ,("PROP","1")
      ,("REL","143")
      ,("SEQNUM","850")]}
KernelEvent
   { kernelEventAction = ActionAdd
   , kernelEventDevPath = "/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/input/input3/mouse0"
   , kernelEventSubSystem = "input"
   , kernelEventDetails = fromList
      [("DEVNAME","input/mouse0")
      ,("MAJOR","13")
      ,("MINOR","32")
      ,("SEQNUM","851")]}
KernelEvent
   { kernelEventAction = ActionAdd
   , kernelEventDevPath = "/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/input/input3/event2"
   , kernelEventSubSystem = "input"
   , kernelEventDetails = fromList
      [("DEVNAME","input/event2")
      ,("MAJOR","13")
      ,("MINOR","66")
      ,("SEQNUM","852")]}
KernelEvent
   { kernelEventAction = ActionChange
   , kernelEventDevPath = "/devices/platform/regulatory.0"
   , kernelEventSubSystem = "platform"
   , kernelEventDetails = fromList
      [("COUNTRY","00")
      ,("MODALIAS","platform:regulatory")
      ,("SEQNUM","853")]}

The three first events are due to Linux lazily loading the driver for the mouse. The last event is Linux asking the user-space to load the wireless regulatory information.