Procedure on mounting USB/hotplug devices

[Casey Stamper]

Tim wrote:
> Tim:
>>> No, I'm saying that dynamically connected things don't have an entry
>>> written for them in the fstab file, automatically.  Additional to that,
>>> you wouldn't mount them in that abbreviated manner, manually.
> 
> Marko Vojinovic:
>> No? And what service provides automatic mounting (in runlevel 3, no X active)?
> 
> There wasn't one.
> 
>> And what if automounter doesn't work as expected?
> 
> You're equally up the creek without a paddle.
> 
> This situation is not good, and you're not the first to complain about
> it.  I haven't seen a decent suggestion about resolving it.  I've seen
> comments to use gnome-mount, which as we both feel, sounds silly.  Not
> to mention being yet another thing to learn, and a convoluted thing, at
> that.
> 
> And I've seen arguments on both sides as to whether a text only mode
> should have an automounter.  Myself, I feel that if you've plugged a
> flashdrive into the socket, you want to use it.  Why should you have to
> play the role of the computer to mount it?
> 
> Yes, I see the need in proper dismounting before an unplug, but there's
> a world of difference between a simple "dismount flashdrive" command and
> a varying "mount /dev/variable-name ..." command.
> 
>> I plug in my USB flash memory, kernel detects it, udev creates /dev/sdb for 
>> it, and that's it. There is nothing in /media, nothing in /mnt. I have to su 
>> to root, and manually mount it via
>>
>> # mount -t vfat /dev/sdb /some/directory
>>
>> which of course works, but is a pain since only root has privileges for 
>> accessing the data.
> 
> A difficulty with this, that you'd otherwise put entries into the fstab
> file, is that you can't always predict which device a removeable drive
> will be found at.  You might have two drives, that aren't always used.
> Today your flashdrive might be /dev/sdb tomorrow it could be /dev/sdc.
> 
> The move towards drive labels avoids that issue.  But it's a right
> nightmare to add a label to a Microsoft filesystem on Linux.
> 
>> So what is the name of the daemon that should do all this 
>> for me? (it doesn't seem to work properly, so I need to tweak with it...)
> 
> Last I looked into it, it was some interaction between HAL and either
> Gnome or KDE.
> 
>>> or you can use gnome-mount to get it work out the details.
> 
>> Well, I tried something like
>>
>> $ gnome-mount --device /dev/sdb
>>
>> and the first thing it did was to complain that there is no X running (!!), 
>> than it falls back to text-mode, complains that it cannot find any partitions 
>> on /dev/sdb, and fails. It does not detect the filesystem, it does not read 
>> off the label, it does not create a mount point.
> 
> Shouldn't that be something like sdb1 rather than just sdb?
> 
>> But I think that the fault is in hal not providing appropriate info for it, 
>> since "lshal | grep sdb" returns nothing. Hal does not seem to have detected 
>> the flash memory, so gnome-mount knows nothing about it.
> 
> Just to muddy the waters, there's been a bit of an ongoing issue with
> udev and USB devices lately.  Some people have been unable to mount
> things.  I think it must be hardware dependent, as I don't have those
> problems (currently).
> 
>>> I haven't quite got around to looking at manual mounting on FC7, it's
>>> working automatically for me, quite fine.
> 
>>> I think you might want to have a look at man gnome-mount
> 
>> Besides from not being intended for direct usage, I get the feeling that it 
>> simply does not work properly without Gnome running. It reads settings from 
>> gconf (which may not exist)
> 
> Yes, I don't think much of things that rely on gnome-something (gconf,
> etc.), when Gnome shouldn't be a requirement.  I've been right peeved at
> gconf, just lately, trying to sort out a keyboard issue.  That's
> something that I don't think should be handled by gconf.
> 
>> All in all, I believe the culprit is hal in this particular case. But how do I 
>> get it to work?
> 
> I think you need to look into how to make HAL rules.  It's changed a lot
> since the last time I looked at that (I had to fiddle around to get a
> digital camera mounted to read its files - that was a nightmare).  But I
> still feel that the user shouldn't have to go around modifying HAL rules
> for something as commonplace as a flash drive.
> 
>> Of course, I can always edit /etc/fstab and put in appropriate data by hand, 
>> and this will work, but that is a workaround, not a solution, right?
> 
> I tend to agree.  You paint yourself into a corner trying to write fixed
> rules for non-fixed media.
> 
Especially when you write in those fixed rules and boot the system w/out 
the device in there and it hangs for a good long while chewing on that 
line in fstab.

-- 
Casey Stamper
http://www.stampersite.com/wordpress