Knoppix HW detect on AL

Question

I was facing same problem what my friend wrote on Gentoo Linux, not being able to connect external devices with Arch Linux.
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?p=245998
Knoppix has an excellent hardware detect. I did something unexpected. I installed Arch Linux base (0.4) and copied Knoppix base packages on top of Arch Linux. Believe or not it worked.
First I thought it will crash when updating with AL's packages (pacman -Syu) but everything worked fine. Same with additional packages. Only what I was no longer able to use Debian's "dselect" package manager when library files where updated. Not a big deal when succeeding to have a good HW detect (USB hdd storage, USB CDROM-RW, flashcard, etc.) and running AL packages and pacman.
As an idea, would it be possible for AL to use Knoppix HW detect packages, if modified?

Answer 1

sarah31 wrote:
i said it should be OPTIONAL. I also think it needs to be hacked a bit in order to be able to live with devfs. disabling or otherwise a base system feature is just not very desirable for me. I am sure the scripts can be hacked to work with arch linux without having to do any of the required changes.
my main concern is always that a package conform to and not alter the "arch linux" way.
For everyone's information, these were the main points I kept in mind (after speaking earlier with sarah31) when hacking Knoppix's HWD for Arch Linux usage.
1. Made it "optional" by removing all boot scripts. Now its a manual start /usr/bin/hwd.
2. Changed the partition search criteria to find devfs (/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/disc) instead of standard partitions (/dev/hda, /dev/sda, etc.).
## Scan partitions
if [ -f /proc/partitions ]; then
partitions=""
dma=""
pold="no_partition"
while read a b c p unused; do
## Workaround for a /proc/partitions bug
[ "$p" = "$pold" ] && break
pold="$p"
case $p in
ide/host?/bus?/target?/lun0/disc|scsi/host?/bus?/target?/lun0/disc)
partitions="$partitions /dev/$p"
To make it easier for users to mount devices, its requested to keep the compatibility mode for old devices (standard parititions)  in /dev/devfsd.conf untagged. Its untagged as default in Arch Linux.3. All auto config setups (fstab, XF86Config, network, etc.) are removed.
4. Doesn't require or change any of the existing setup or system of AL. Only provides information how to config manually.
More inforamation on topic "Hardware detect manager for AL":
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?t=580
dp wrote:
having control over the system is one thing - trying a lot of alsa-modules to work with your soundblaster is the other ... on a funny chipset you will spend days
what about adapting "sndconfig" or an other tool to "propose" you some lines (modules) for your configuration?
When hacking Knoppix, I found sndconfig, mkxf86config, mouseconfig, kbdconfig, and wlcardconfig. So far I only worked on the base script (knoppix-autoconfig) so I cannot say much about the other scripts. Mkxf86config and mouseconfig may not be needed when xf86cfg does a good job, but the other scripts could be useful.