What is hotplug exactly?
 

I have a few questions about hotplug. I have a basic understanding of it's purpose from what I've seen in some of the hotplug scripts and the man page, but I am still confused about a few things.

1. How long ago was hotplug introduced? 2.4.x kernels? 2.6.x? Is it even part of the kernel?

2. Can you disable hotplug while configuring the kernel or is it mostly controlled by scripts?

2. Do all distros use hotplug? I notice its optional in Slackware 10, and I never noticed hotplug anywhere in distros like Fedora.

3. In Slackware for example it is loaded upon boot and detects my eth0 card, but it doesn't seem to be running in the background after that ( ! ps -e | grep hotplug ). Will it no longer detect hardware changes after boot or am I missing something?

Sorry if these are stupid questions (they probably are), I hope someone will demystify this for a me a little. I'll keep reading up on this until I have a pretty good understanding.

there is a bit of reading here

http://linux-hotplug.sourceforge.net/

hope that answers your ?.
good luck.

Thanks! A helpful resource I probably should have searched for earlier.