[hsflinux] modprobe for hsf driver making machine hang

[Dave Driver]

Linuxant support (Jonathan) wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> the problem seems to be related to the conversion script used to 
> generate the file '/etc/modprobe.conf' from the '/etc/modules.conf' 
> file. The line 'install hsfserial ...' creates an infinite loop for the 
> 'modprobe' command. Simply removing this line should fix the problem and 
> it will not affect the HSF driver.
> 

You are right that the problem is related to the conversion script, but 
I'm not sure that fixing the script is such a simple solution. What you 
need to put into modprobe.conf to fix this problem doesn't really have a 
simple equivalent in modules.conf so there's no real way for the script 
to know what it is you want to end up with.

Removing the line will prevent the alias loop, but the modem will not 
work because not all the correct modules will load on demand. You would 
be missing hsfpcibasic2 or whatever other hardware module is necessary. 
Manual steps or some other bodge (e.g. autoload.d) would be required to 
make it work.

I don't have the full solution, but I know what needs to be changed in 
modprobe.conf to make it work flawlessly. Yours for the price of a 
licence and cheap at ten times the price.

I am surprised at Linuxant's approach to setting up the modules. It 
seems that you are forcing multiple modules to load when they are not 
required, and this is what is making things difficult. The device files 
will be mapped semi-randomly to physical devices at module load time, 
and this could also give unpredictable results. I would have thought 
that a better solution would be to work out what hardware needs to be 
supported during the hsfconfig, then set up modprobe.conf so that a 
particular device will map to the same physical device each time, and 
only load the modules that are required (e.g. pci, usb etc.). What is 
Linuxant's view on this comment?