Whack-a-mole device assignments

[James Mckenzie]

-----Original Message-----
From: William Hooper <whooperhsd3 at earthlink.net>
Sent: Jan 20, 2005 8:12 AM
To: fedora-list at redhat.com
Subject: Re: Whack-a-mole device assignments


Robert said:
> I'm running FC3, kernel 2.6.9-1.667 and thoroughly confused by hal &
> friends. I have a USB disk drive (a real drive) and a 256MB flash drive.
> Consider  this snippet from /var/log/messages, with comments inserted:
>
>
> # First, I insert the flash "drive", followed by the Maxtor drive
[snip]
> Jan 20 07:32:27 mavis fstab-sync[3532]: added mount point
> /media/LEXAR_MEDIA for /dev/sda1
[snip]
> fstab-sync[3722]: added mount point /media/NO_NAME for /dev/sdb1
> Jan 20 07:32:51 mavis fstab-sync[3726]: added mount point /media/OTOT
> for /dev/sdb2
[snip]
> # Then re-insert, but in reverse order:
> Jan 20 07:35:05 mavis fstab-sync[4225]: added mount point /media/NO_NAME
for /dev/sda1
> Jan 20 07:35:05 mavis fstab-sync[4229]: added mount point /media/OTOT
> for /dev/sda2
[snip]
> Jan 20 07:35:23 mavis fstab-sync[4405]: added mount point
> /media/LEXAR_MEDIA for /dev/sdb1
[snip]
> This doesn't really matter when I manually mount the drive(s) from a
> terminal 'cause it all gets worked out with /etc/fstab: [rj at mavis ~]$ mount
> /media/LEX*

Because the mountpoints are consistent.

> ...but it sure plays hell with trying to use device icons on the KDE
> desktop because apparently a snapshot of the fstab is taken when the
> desktop device is created and that's that. Perhaps someone else has
> already fought this battle and won?

Sounds like a KDE bug to me.  The mount points are consistent so that is
what KDE should be using.

-------James' reply:

William:

Looks like it is working 'as designed'.  You should not be mounting /dev/sda or /dev/sdb but rather the /media extensions.  Actually, they should be automounting as they do on my system.  However, I'm using GNOME rather than KDE and the icons 'automagically' appear on my desktop with the ability to unmount them from the right click menu.  Also, the devices appear in /etc/fstab.  I think he wants persistance through this file.  That requires that he connect the drives in the SAME order each and every time.  I think this is not possible if the devices are connected at boot time.  It may be time to look at the /media directory and not /dev.