Re: [gentoo-user] Automounting drives, partitions & udev, mtab & fstab

Re: [gentoo-user] Automounting drives, partitions & udev, mtab & fstab

[Douglas Linford]

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Alan,


Excuse the double post....

So...I am running Gnome 2.16.2   Is Gnome Volume Manager also managing the
drives and partitions I have?
And then what creates the volume name that is displayed on the desktop for
that drive?
In my example I have a USB external drive with a ext3 partition, there is no
listing in /etc/fstab for that partition, /etc/mtab lists it as, /dev/sdc2
/media/disk, and on the desktop the icon for it reads, 66.0 GB Volume. Where
is that configured?

douglas

On 2/4/07, Alan McKinnon <alan@linuxholdings.co.za> wrote:
>
> On Monday 05 February 2007, Douglas Linford wrote:
> > Good day all,
> >
> > I'm getting confused very quickly about what program/process actually
> > automounts my partitions and then what creates the volume name that
> > is displayed on the desktop for that drive, once it is mounted.
>
> Traditionally it was fstab that did this, and automounting programs read
> that file and did nothing if a drive was not listed.
>
> These days it's becoming different. Icons that pop up on the desktop are
> normally mounted via hal. KDE and Gnome at a minimum have applets that
> control it and where you can make your settings. Other wms may or may
> not do this for you, and of course on the console you get to use the
> mount command as always.
>
> alan
>
> --
> Optimists say the glass is half full,
> Pessimists say the glass is half empty,
> Developers say wtf is the glass twice as big as it needs to be?
>
> Alan McKinnon
> alan at linuxholdings dot co dot za
> +27 82, double three seven, one nine three five
> --
> gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
>
>

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Re: [gentoo-user] Automounting drives, partitions & udev, mtab & fstab

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Mon, 5 Feb 2007 06:35:40 -0800, Douglas Linford wrote:

> In my example I have a USB external drive with a ext3 partition, there
> is no listing in /etc/fstab for that partition, /etc/mtab lists it
> as, /dev/sdc2 /media/disk, and on the desktop the icon for it reads,
> 66.0 GB Volume. Where is that configured?

This is handled by pmount and HAL. The default is to use the volume name
of the disk for the icon and the mount point. This was discussed only a
few days ago, so a quick search of the list archives should show it up.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Philosophical error: Demonstrate the existence of a key to continue

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Re: [gentoo-user] Automounting drives, partitions & udev, mtab & fstab

[Alan McKinnon]

On Monday 05 February 2007, Douglas Linford wrote:
> Alan,
>
>
> Excuse the double post....

You mean the top post? Please don't do that, on mailing lists it's 
considered rude

> So...I am running Gnome 2.16.2   Is Gnome Volume Manager also
> managing the drives and partitions I have?

Yes

> And then what creates the volume name that is displayed on the
> desktop for that drive?

Gnome VFS (Virtual File System) reads it from various possible places, 
like the file system label, or the disk drive description, or one of 
the USB attributes in the case of USB storage devices.

What VFS us trying to do is find a sensible descriptor to display to you 
so you know what device it's talking about

> In my example I have a USB external drive with a ext3 partition,
> there is no listing in /etc/fstab for that partition, /etc/mtab lists
> it as, /dev/sdc2 /media/disk, and on the desktop the icon for it
> reads, 66.0 GB Volume. Where is that configured?

It isn't configured anywhere to my knowledge, but I'm not a Gnome user 
and could be wrong.

Let me explain how this works:

The kernel knows about mount points and file systems. Somewhere it has a 
function that performs a mount, and user space programs use this 
function to accomplish the mount. One such program is "mount", which is 
configured via /etc/fstab and mtab as you point out. "mount" is a 
traditional program, been around for ages and we all know and love it. 
It's even suid so regular users can use it if root puts "user" 
or "users" in the options for a particular mount.

"mount" is not the only way to mount stuff though. You can write any 
user space program you want, and call it whatever you feel like, to 
perform this system function called mounting. And you don't *have* to 
consider /etc/fstab when doing it either. Now, "mount" worked fine for 
years, but it all went belly up when pluggable storage devices came 
out. A user expects to insert a flash disk or camera and to see the 
files on it, and to not have to be root to do this. This effectively 
makes mount unsuitable for pluggable devices.

So KDE and Gnome have figured out other ways to mount stuff, and lately 
the workable solutions have used hal to find devices and dbus to tell 
apps about the device, all nicely configurable with GUI tools. They 
don't use fstab either.

You can cause interesting effects for yourself if you use an app like 
supermount from Mandriva and also use KDE automounting. Supermount 
modifies fstab, so this combination can result in the same device being 
mounted twice at the same time - entirely possible but seldom what you 
want :-)

I hope this helps, and that I correctly judged what you needed to know. 
Now it's up to you to find the cute box to click to get the behaviour 
you want.

alan

-- 
Optimists say the glass is half full,
Pessimists say the glass is half empty,
Developers say wtf is the glass twice as big as it needs to be?

Alan McKinnon
alan at linuxholdings dot co dot za
+27 82, double three seven, one nine three five
-- 
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-user] Automounting drives, partitions & udev, mtab & fstab

[Douglas Linford]

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Alan,

Thank you for the explanation...some of this helps, I already knew about the
mount command. I have hal and dbus installed...what GUI tools for those apps
were you refering to?

douglas

On 2/5/07, Alan McKinnon <alan@linuxholdings.co.za> wrote:
>
> On Monday 05 February 2007, Douglas Linford wrote:
> > Alan,
> >
> >
> > Excuse the double post....
>
> You mean the top post? Please don't do that, on mailing lists it's
> considered rude
>
> > So...I am running Gnome 2.16.2   Is Gnome Volume Manager also
> > managing the drives and partitions I have?
>
> Yes
>
> > And then what creates the volume name that is displayed on the
> > desktop for that drive?
>
> Gnome VFS (Virtual File System) reads it from various possible places,
> like the file system label, or the disk drive description, or one of
> the USB attributes in the case of USB storage devices.
>
> What VFS us trying to do is find a sensible descriptor to display to you
> so you know what device it's talking about
>
> > In my example I have a USB external drive with a ext3 partition,
> > there is no listing in /etc/fstab for that partition, /etc/mtab lists
> > it as, /dev/sdc2 /media/disk, and on the desktop the icon for it
> > reads, 66.0 GB Volume. Where is that configured?
>
> It isn't configured anywhere to my knowledge, but I'm not a Gnome user
> and could be wrong.
>
> Let me explain how this works:
>
> The kernel knows about mount points and file systems. Somewhere it has a
> function that performs a mount, and user space programs use this
> function to accomplish the mount. One such program is "mount", which is
> configured via /etc/fstab and mtab as you point out. "mount" is a
> traditional program, been around for ages and we all know and love it.
> It's even suid so regular users can use it if root puts "user"
> or "users" in the options for a particular mount.
>
> "mount" is not the only way to mount stuff though. You can write any
> user space program you want, and call it whatever you feel like, to
> perform this system function called mounting. And you don't *have* to
> consider /etc/fstab when doing it either. Now, "mount" worked fine for
> years, but it all went belly up when pluggable storage devices came
> out. A user expects to insert a flash disk or camera and to see the
> files on it, and to not have to be root to do this. This effectively
> makes mount unsuitable for pluggable devices.
>
> So KDE and Gnome have figured out other ways to mount stuff, and lately
> the workable solutions have used hal to find devices and dbus to tell
> apps about the device, all nicely configurable with GUI tools. They
> don't use fstab either.
>
> You can cause interesting effects for yourself if you use an app like
> supermount from Mandriva and also use KDE automounting. Supermount
> modifies fstab, so this combination can result in the same device being
> mounted twice at the same time - entirely possible but seldom what you
> want :-)
>
> I hope this helps, and that I correctly judged what you needed to know.
> Now it's up to you to find the cute box to click to get the behaviour
> you want.
>
> alan
>
> --
> Optimists say the glass is half full,
> Pessimists say the glass is half empty,
> Developers say wtf is the glass twice as big as it needs to be?
>
> Alan McKinnon
> alan at linuxholdings dot co dot za
> +27 82, double three seven, one nine three five
> --
> gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
>
>

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Re: [gentoo-user] Automounting drives, partitions & udev, mtab & fstab

[Alan McKinnon]

On Monday 05 February 2007, Douglas Linford wrote:
> Alan,
>
> Thank you for the explanation...some of this helps, I already knew
> about the mount command. I have hal and dbus installed...what GUI
> tools for those apps were you refering to?

In KDE it's controlled by kcontrol - that enormous config app with 1000s 
of selectable options. There's a selection near the top of the menu 
which asks you which icons to display on the desktop. Options include a 
large range of mounted and unmounted storage device types.

I can't help much with Gnome (I don't use it) but surely it will be part 
of the vast array of configuration options available in the Preferences 
menu. This is installed automatically with Gnome. In my limited 
experience with Gnome I have always found that a device can be accessed 
through the middle Other menu

alan


-- 
Optimists say the glass is half full,
Pessimists say the glass is half empty,
Developers say wtf is the glass twice as big as it needs to be?

Alan McKinnon
alan at linuxholdings dot co dot za
+27 82, double three seven, one nine three five
-- 
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-user] Automounting drives, partitions & udev, mtab & fstab

[Douglas Linford]

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There are some basic configuration options in the "Removable Drives and
Media" applet in Gnome, but not much else that I can see. But it is
obviously Gnome Volume Manager that is doing some of the work that results
in removable media drive icons that show up on my Desktop, as when I boot
into xfc4, my removable media doesn't even mount, at least automatically.

doug

On 2/5/07, Alan McKinnon <alan@linuxholdings.co.za> wrote:
>
> On Monday 05 February 2007, Douglas Linford wrote:
> > Alan,
> >
> > Thank you for the explanation...some of this helps, I already knew
> > about the mount command. I have hal and dbus installed...what GUI
> > tools for those apps were you refering to?
>
> In KDE it's controlled by kcontrol - that enormous config app with 1000s
> of selectable options. There's a selection near the top of the menu
> which asks you which icons to display on the desktop. Options include a
> large range of mounted and unmounted storage device types.
>
> I can't help much with Gnome (I don't use it) but surely it will be part
> of the vast array of configuration options available in the Preferences
> menu. This is installed automatically with Gnome. In my limited
> experience with Gnome I have always found that a device can be accessed
> through the middle Other menu
>
> alan
>
>
> --
> Optimists say the glass is half full,
> Pessimists say the glass is half empty,
> Developers say wtf is the glass twice as big as it needs to be?
>
> Alan McKinnon
> alan at linuxholdings dot co dot za
> +27 82, double three seven, one nine three five
> --
> gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
>
>

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