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The Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) provides a view of the various hardware attached to a system. This view is updated dynamically as hardware configuration changes by means of hotplug or other mechanisms. HAL represents a piece of hardware as a device object. A device object is identified by a unique identifier and carries a set of key/value pairs, referred to as device properties. Some properties are derived from the actual hardware, some are merged from device information files (.fdi files), and some are related to the actual device configuration.
HAL provides an easy-to-use API through D-Bus. D-Bus is an IPC framework that, among other features, provides a system-wide message-bus that allows applications to talk to one another. Specifically, D-Bus provides asynchronous notification such that HAL can notify other peers on the message-bus when devices are added and removed, as well as when properties on a device are changing.
In the Solaris operating system, HAL is supported by a daemon, hald(8), and a set of utilities that enable the adding and removing of devices and the modification of their properties.
fdi (5), hald (8)
See the HAL pages, including the HAL specification, under http://freedesktop.org.