Getting autofs to work "the Debian Way (TM)"

[Nate Bargmann <n0nb@networksplus.net>]

Greets all.

I've managed to get autofs installed and going.  Unfortunately, there
seem to be a couple of bugs I'm having trouble resolving concerning the
access of floppy disks.

First, setting -fstype=auto causes the mount daemon to give an error
when accessing a vfat or msdos formatted floppy.  Setting this to vfat
causes it to work as expected allowing the contents of the disk to be
read.

Second, writes to the disk cannot be performed by a normal user account.
The directory autofs creates, /var/autofs/misc/floppy, is owned by root
and in group root.  Even though my normal account is a member of the
floppy group, writes do not occur.  However, having set up my /etc/fstab
properly my normal account can mount a floppy with the 'mount /floppy'
command and can do writes, etc. on the disk.

The first case seems like a bug in automount(8) as moun(8) seems
perfectly capable of auto detecting the filesystem type and mounting it.

The second case seems more involved and would require the created
directory to have a different group than the default of root.

I'm setting this system up for a user as a desktop and wish to make
things as easy as possible.  If anyone has solved these problems, please
pass along your knowledge.

- Nate >>

-- 
 Wireless | Amateur Radio Station N0NB          | "We have awakened a
 Internet | n0nb@networksplus.net               | sleeping giant and
 Location | Bremen, Kansas USA EM19ov           | have instilled in him
  Amateur radio exams; ham radio; Linux info @  | a terrible resolve".
             http://www.qsl.net/n0nb/           | - Admiral Yamomoto