Re: Mounting USB stuff

["Michael S. Peek" <peek@tiem.utk.edu>]

Sanjay Debian wrote:

>     I'm a n00b who's trying to figure out how to mount USB stuff.  I
>     hear hal will
>     do just that, but when I run "lshal", I get the following error:
<snip>
> I had no idea you have to do so much just to mount usb. On my unstable 
> debian install I can install my usb flash drive like this
>
> mount -t usbfs /dev/sda1 /mnt/usb

Ah, but I'm no ordinary n00b.  I'm a Power-N00b, the most dangerous of my breed...

But seriously, allow me to clarify my question:

I'm trying to figure out how to automount various USB devices in a consistent 
manor such that a generic clueless user can use their own devices without 
having to remember whether or not that flash drive is sdb1 or sdb2, etc..., or 
for that matter, without the user having to even know what "mount" means. 
(After all, if I let users mount stuff, it's just a matter of time before 
someone forgets to unmount, and then they call me wondering why files are 
broken/missing.)

I have heard that the hal package can be used to automount USB stuff upon 
connection, and auto-unmount it upon disconnection, and that it will even mount 
it according to the product's name (if that can be determined).

That sounded exactly like what I wanted, but I've run into a snag with dbus-1 
seg-faulting on startup.

My alternative option is to set up udev to recognize devices and map them to 
consistent names in /dev and then add user-mountable entries in /etc/fstab, but 
that may require that I create rules files for /etc/udev/rules.d/ for 
(potentially) every single device that a user may bring into my office, which 
is what I would like to avoid if possible.  It would be sweet if the computer 
could just figure it out for itself, hence my interest in  hal.

BTW, I'm running Debian sarge w/ 2.6.8-2-686 kernel.

Any help is good help, thanks in advance...

Michael