[elrepo] package suggestion: USB DisplayLink drivers and X11 driver

[Phil Perry]

On 09/06/11 19:25, covert at mighty.sytes.net wrote:
>
>
> Hi,
>
> I just joined the list, so my apologies if I am posting this to the wrong
> place.
>
> I have been using the drivers from ELRepo on my RHEL / CentOS / SL
> machines for a while, and it has really been a great help.  Thanks much to
> the developers.  (I have some machines with r8168 cards, and I don't think
> I would have ever got them reliable without ELRepo)
>
> I joined the mailing list though to make a suggestion for a set of drivers
> to add to the repo:  USB DisplayLink drivers and X11 drivers.
>
> These are the standard drivers that allow you to plugin a USB video card,
> or sometimes a USB video card + monitor combo, into a machine, and use X11
> with that monitor.
>
> The URL for this work is here:
> http://libdlo.freedesktop.org/wiki/
>
> The drivers have been integrated into more recent kernels.  The suggestion
> is to include both the kernel and X11 drivers (similar to ATI / Nvidia
> drivers)
>
>
> These drivers can be used to allow an administrator to login, with X11, to
> a "headless" box.  By walking up to a set of headless rack mounted servers,
> you can plug a USB hub into the front jack, and start X11 remotely the the
> newly plugged in terminal.  Video, Keyboard, and Mouse all go through USB,
> meaning there is no need to get to the back of the machine to attach a
> monitor.  This could be very handy for certain circumstances.
>
>
> Thank you.
>
> Cheers,
> Greg
>

Hi Greg,

This certainly sounds interesting and like a candidate for elrepo. 
You've done a great job of "selling" it to me :-)

I have a couple questions that I'm hoping you might be able to help with.

Are you thinking el5, el6 or both?

I've had a very quick look around the above wiki site. There are a 
couple "kernel" driver branches available - the udlfb.ko driver in the 
mainline kernel which we could backport and the displaylink-mod listed 
on the above wiki. Which did you have in mind, and why? I'm guessing we 
would prefer to backport the official kernel driver as that's the only 
one ever likely to end up officially supported in RHEL.

Can you point me to the X11 drivers we should be looking at please.

Have you actually managed to build any of this on el6 and get it 
working? If so, that would be an immense help.

If we build packages, can you help with testing them? We don't have the 
necessary hardware which always makes it difficult.

Regards,

Phil