On Thu, Feb 28, 2008 at 10:40:34 +0000, Adam Hardy wrote:
> Florian Kulzer on 27/02/08 22:01, wrote:
>> On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 10:01:54 +0000, Adam Hardy wrote:
>>
>> [...]
>>
>>>>>>>>>> On Sun February 24 2008, Adam Hardy wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>> Using xfce, Thunar used to pick up on the new usb storage device and put an
>>>>>>>>>>> icon in its tree pane for me with the usb stick's name. Clicking on that
>>>>>>>>>>> would then mount it to /media
>>
>> [...]
>>
>>> So hal is actually meant to mount the usb stick automatically? Not just show an
>>> icon in thunar? How about CDs?
>>
>> I don't know that; I guess that depends on the "philosophy" of
>> xfce/thunar. To the normal user it probably does not matter exactly
>> when the mounting happens, as long as he/she can click on the icon at
>> any time and access the media.
>
> My philosophy is that I never remember that it's /dev/sda1 on this
> machine because my memory is, er... what's the word again ....
The advantage of a mounting mechanism that involves HAL is that you can
give volume labels to all your USB sticks/drives and they are then
always mounted under /media/<label>, independent of plug-in order etc.
That is the reason why I suggested to use pmount-hal for testing, to see
if this mechanism works.
> Generally when copying stuff to a usb stick, I use the command line. So I
> would appreciate automatic mounting of my usb stick to /media/somewhere.
> Except that this 'automation' involves going from the command line into
> thunar or the desktop and clicking to get it mounted.
[...]
> Do you run hal and does it mount usb sticks and cds automatically?
I get an icon on my KDE desktop whenever removable media is plugged in;
I can click on that icon and it is mounted at that moment and opened in
Konqueror. KDE can be configured to do the mounting automatically as
soon as the USB stick is detected, but I have not activated that option.
As far as I understand the design principle, something "higher up" than
HAL is meant to actually decide if the device is to be mounted
immediately and if there are any other actions to be taken, e.g.
launching a media player for an audio CD. HAL is only the means to
access the hardware in a well-defined, abstracted way; the mounting
itself is initiated by the KDE media service, the gnome volume manager
or equivalent components of other desktop environments. You can,
however, use HAL policy files to influence mount options and other
properties.
Since you want to be independent of the desktop environment, you might
want to run ivman, usbmount, or a similar daemon. If I remember
correctly, it is difficult to ensure unique mount points with usbmount
since it relies on plug-in order. I like the concept of ivman better
because it relies on HAL, so it should not clash with a running desktop
environment. I have never tried ivman myself, though. Its sourceforge
page says it is currently in beta stage. (Both usbmount and ivman are
available in Etch.)
--
Regards, | http://users.icfo.es/Florian.Kulzer
Florian |