writeprotection of unmounted mountpoints automaitcally - possible??

[Jonathan Berry]

On Fri, 14 Jan 2005 09:30:29 +0100, Alexander Raab
<alexander.raab at chello.at> wrote:
> Hi, all.
> Is there a possibility to set the permissons of ummounted mountpoints to
> writeprotected?
> I am coping files very often without checking if a usb-drive is really
> mounted.
> 
> Alex

I think this would be possible, but only if what you are mounting is,
say, formatted with FAT or FAT32.  I know the permissions for those
FSs are set when the device is mounted with options in fstab.  You
should be able to "chmod -w" the mount point (device is not mounted),
which should prevent writing.  Then when the device is mounted, the
options should change the permissions.  You can always try it and see
what happens.
I know if the device is formatted with ext3 then you simply
chmod/chown the directory after the device is mounted to change the
permissions on the device.  I don't recall whether these permissions
are seperate from those of the directory when nothing is mounted
there.  Again, I'd suggest just trying it and seeing what happens. 
You can always change it if it doesn't work.

Jonathan