Changed USB Device Hotpluggable Behavior

Solaris Express 6/06: This feature information has been revised in the Solaris Express 10/06 release.

This Solaris release introduces a new device attribute, hotpluggable, to identify those devices that can be connected or disconnected without rebooting the system and configured or unconfigured automatically without user intervention. All USB and 1394 devices are identified as hotpluggable devices to gain those benefits described in Using USB Mass Storage Devices. In addition, non-removable media USB and 1394 devices are no longer identified as removable-media devices and no longer have a removable-media attribute.

The changes are primarily made at the kernel level to improve support for non-removable media USB and 1394 devices, and improve the performance for those devices. However, theses changes do not impact the use of these devices. For example, the responsibility of mounting and unmounting these devices is controlled by rmvolmgr. From a user's perspective, the only visible changes are the hotpluggable and removable-media attributes of a device.

For more information, see USB and 1394 (FireWire) Support Enhancements.