Drive icons (FC3t2 fresh install)

[David Zeuthen]

On Tue, 2004-09-21 at 12:17 +0300, Panu Matilainen wrote:
> On Tue, 21 Sep 2004, David Zeuthen wrote:
> 
> > On Tue, 2004-09-21 at 09:12 +0100, PFJ wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > > 
> > > My system has multiple drives attached (dev/hda -> dev/hdh). I currently
> > > have /dev/hdb1 as /home, /dev/hdb2 as /MP3, dev/hdg1 as /Programming,
> > > dev/hdg2 as /web and dev/hdh1 as /backup. These are entered in fstab and
> > > all work quite merrily.
> > > 
> > > I have found something annoying though.
> > > 
> > 
> > What're you're seeing now is just stock GNOME VFS.
> 
> On a similar note: on my testbox a windows partition (vfat) on the system
> (/dev/hdaX) appears on the desktop as an icon with a name "idedisk" which
> doesn't mean anything at all to somebody who doesn't know what "IDE" 
> means. And in any case I don't really see all the partitions on the system 
> on my *desktop* - inside the "Computer" window, why not.

Of course we shouldn't be using technical jargon like IDE or USB on the
desktop (though we may hint something in the icon). This will also be
fixed with the GNOME VFS hal patch.

Today GNOME VFS simply uses the last element of the mount point, so
blame fstab-sync (which is shipped with hal) for the idedisk name :-).
On a related note it is also planned for fstab-sync to use a little more
intelligent mount point names (even FHS2.3 compliant where applicable),
e.g. perhaps the volume label [1] or the UUID so we can get stable mount
point names (which is nice if e.g. you're using Rhythmbox or XMMS or
something).

In fact, it is my view that the UI shouldn't even display technical
stuff like mount points etc. 
                                                     
> > > On my desktop, I have icons for all of these directories - they
> > > shouldn't be there and neither should an icon for /media/idedisk1 (/dev/
> > > hda1).
> > > 
> > > What do I change in fstab so they don't appear? While a link to the MP3
> > > directory is okay, I certainly don't want other users being able to
> > > access the other mounts. For the production version, I would seriously
> > > consider not having them being visible.
> > > 
> > 
> > This will be addressed in Rawhide shortly with GNOME VFS using a patch
> > to query hal what the drives/volumes are capable of (e.g. their volume
> > label, make, size, whether they're hotpluggable, whether they use
> > removable media etc etc). Here's an early screenshot of what it might
> > look like
> 
> Ok if nonremovable media stops from appearing on the desktop then I've no 
> further complaints wrt this.
> 

Only hotpluggable drives and removable media will be displayed on the
desktop.

Thanks,
David

[1] : but what about UTF-8 - will we break buggy programs that can't
cope with UTF-8 in the /etc/fstab file or in a path? Are there any such
programs in the distro? Does anyone know?