Comment 2 for bug 16811

Hi.

raw1394 was the first generation of the firewire multimedia support in linux.
Then they added a number of modules (e.g. video1394, dv1394) to do some of the
parsing and buffering in-kernel. Now the linux1394 people seem to be back to
using the raw1394 device + helper libraries, but without extra kernel modules
and devices. They made a new library, libiec61883, that uses the raw1394_iso api
of libraw1394. And hence the raw1394 device.

(This is my impression of the development process -- not entirely sure of the
history.)

So the circle has come around. It seems they want you to use the raw1394 device,
even if you have a hard drive connected.

Near-term suggestion: Ubuntu should (probably) add a debconf option, either for
the owner of the device or its permissions. One would leave it 660 for disk, the
other would either be 666/disk or 660/video. Ubuntu should default to leaving
the device accessible, betting on firewire being used more for DV cameras than
for hard drives.

Longer-term solution: talk to upstream folks, see if maybe we can get a new
device added, iso1394, that would just be for isochronous operations (mainly
multimedia), get it owned by video.