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laurentgedm
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 23, 2005 10:53 pm    Post subject: nice automounting solution Reply with quote

Hi,

i'm installing Gentoo... on my GRANDMOTHER's new laptop!!! (i could never beleive that if i wasn't doing it right now... imagine the poor ols lady with gentoo on her pc, when it's so hard for her to point+click! :lol: )

As you all understand, she needs something REALLY REALLY easy to use. I'm thinking of a KDE environment, very very very well configured, so she never has to emerge or administrate anything. (i'll do the job periodically)
This is a challenge for Gentoo, since i have to make it EASIER THAN WINDOWS.
I don't want windows because it will annoy her with messages that she won't understand ("updates available", "you don't have an antivirus", "you have a virus", etc...).

Of course (remeber, she's 72!) she won't be able to enter commands such as
Code:
mount /mnt/usb


I was wondering if you knew about a great solution for automounting cdroms, usb sticks, etc.
I was amazed by Ubuntu Linux, which has a great fonctionality: when you insert something in your PC, a new icon appears on the desktop, and you can use it to browse the new automatically mounted filesystem. You can also right-click it to unmount/eject it. I works with Gnome.

I'm not installing Ubuntu because file browsing in GNOME is not as ergonomic as in KDE (from a grandmother's point of view), plus i need a bit of freedom in the configuration, especially with the wireless network, and i'm a little familiar to Gentoo (but still a n00b!).

Hope you can help me in this attempt to prove that gentoo can be suited for old persons...
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yabbadabbadont
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 23, 2005 11:19 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I think there is automounter support in the kernel. It just has to be configured. You would also have to configure KDE to automatically display mounted devices on the Desktop.

Alternatively, you could just create the device icons on the Desktop. I belive that KDE will mount the device, if not already mounted, when you click (double-click) the icon. The drawback is that she will have to right-click and choose unmount before ejecting the media.

Hope this helps.
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Archangel1
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 23, 2005 11:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

yabbadabbadont wrote:
I think there is automounter support in the kernel.

This is dirty and bad and may not be there forever. About the only things that're worse are supermount/submount, which have nasty issues of their own.

The accepted method now is hal/dbus/ivman (or gnome-volume-manager, but that wouldn't be the go in KDE), which is a userspace solution to the same thing.
It shouldn't be too hard to set up; "emerge hal dbus ivman" and add the services to the default runlevel. There's probably a tutorial somewhere.
In KDE 3.4, there's a Devices applet which can be added to the kicker; that'll show icons for mounted cd-roms etc. If you configure it to show icons on the desktop, it'll understand when Ivman mounts something and put the appropriate icon on the desktop for you.

I'm not using KDE any more, but I was quite impressed by how it all worked - from the sounds of it Ubuntu is doing the same thing with GVM.
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Varean
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 24, 2005 12:09 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

If you want to auto-mount a usb stick then you have to make sure you have hotplug emerged
Code:
emerge hotplug


If you have that, then all you have to do is add it to yuor /etc/fstab as sda1(or 2 w/e) and then set the variables.

# <fs> <mountpoint> <type> <opts> $
/dev/sda1 /mnt vfat rw,umask=0 $
/dev/cdroms/cdrom0 /mnt/cdrom auto noauto,user $

Here are 2 lines of my /etc/fstab. The USB stick I plug into USB port 1 will automatically be mount in /mnt and the my cdrom will automatically be mounted in /mnt/cdrom. From KDE, you can just go to storage media to access the Cd rom and then go to /mnt ro access the USB stick. Hope this helps.
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adsmith
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 24, 2005 12:49 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I still think that autofs is the best automount/autounmount solution.
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mario
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 24, 2005 12:52 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

adsmith wrote:
I still think that autofs is the best automount/autounmount solution.


KDE 3.5 will have a service that using hal, will be able to automatically launch a program/open folder/do any action when a media is inserted/removed. Just like in windows.
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adsmith
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 24, 2005 1:00 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

sadly "just like windows" is as bad a solution as any, as it doesn't know to force a write before unmounting. There is no USB signal which says "I'm about to pull out the drive, so unmount it NOW!!", and once I have pulled out the drive, it's too late. Doing actions on removal of usb is useless.

with autofs, I just have timeout 1sec, and that's shorter than the time between me closing my app and reaching for the drive. It's still not flawless, but timeout is very useful.
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mario
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 24, 2005 2:20 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

adsmith wrote:
sadly "just like windows" is as bad a solution as any, as it doesn't know to force a write before unmounting. There is no USB signal which says "I'm about to pull out the drive, so unmount it NOW!!", and once I have pulled out the drive, it's too late. Doing actions on removal of usb is useless.

with autofs, I just have timeout 1sec, and that's shorter than the time between me closing my app and reaching for the drive. It's still not flawless, but timeout is very useful.


Perhaps usb drives should have flush-on-write for this exact purpose. Any other solution would require a hardware change as follows:

1) Pull drive, drive is not entirely pulled and is locked as hardware requests write from software
2) Software makes final write and considers device disconnected.
3) Drive is released and drive can be fully pulled out.
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adsmith
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 24, 2005 2:34 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

well, you can mount with the "sync" option instead of async, but it makes operations so slow....
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laurentgedm
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 24, 2005 7:32 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Many thanks to you all.
I'll try and tell you what i've chosen !
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klockren
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 24, 2005 7:39 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

The only thing I did was
Code:
# emerge hotplug hal ivman


Then I set them on runlevel default with rc-update (hal rc script = hald).
Now, an icon comes up on my desktop when inserting a CD, camera or MP3 player.
It mounts when I double-click it.
Works for me.
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laurentgedm
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 31, 2005 5:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thanks for your tips again. I hope this thread will be useful for others... and for me later!! :D

I had to give up the installation. The reason is simple: i couldn't setup the wireless.
This must be Linux's heaviest weakness at the moment, i think...
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Archangel1
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 01, 2005 4:52 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

laurentgedm wrote:
Thanks for your tips again. I hope this thread will be useful for others... and for me later!! :D

I had to give up the installation. The reason is simple: i couldn't setup the wireless.
This must be Linux's heaviest weakness at the moment, i think...

Unfortunately I have to agree - having spent hours trying to get WPA to work with the uni network, it has so far eluded me. I think I'd gotten pretty close, but now I don't have the laptop any more, so I'll never know.

From what I hear, the kernel drivers are a bit of a mess - they're all doing their own thing. Ubuntu seems to be keen on making some progress in this sort of area, so with a bit of luck that'll roll over into other distros.
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DarkMind
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 01, 2005 5:40 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

ivman is the best :D

0 configuration


Code:
emerge ivman


Code:
/etc/init.d/ivman start
rc-update add ivman default


that's all :)
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YD
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 01, 2005 5:49 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

KDE3.4 + hal solves the problem IMHO. It automatically creates items in /media. Insert CD and it's there. Plug USB and it's there ;)
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mario
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 01, 2005 6:14 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

YD wrote:
KDE3.4 + hal solves the problem IMHO. It automatically creates items in /media. Insert CD and it's there. Plug USB and it's there ;)


KDE3.5 will have auto-actions even. There is a control center manager for actions to be done on insertion and so forth.
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YD
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 01, 2005 6:58 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

There is no KDE3.5 yet. When it be, we will talk. (:
The trouble of OpenSource community is lack of co-ordination, IMHO. There are a lot of incompatible ways to make same action =/
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mario
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 01, 2005 7:10 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

YD wrote:
There is no KDE3.5 yet. When it be, we will talk. (:
The trouble of OpenSource community is lack of co-ordination, IMHO. There are a lot of incompatible ways to make same action =/


I beg to differ - the newest KDE stuff is based on HAL which is a project that arose to create a standard to do these things. Now, if you are primarily a desktop user - you would use the KDE facilities, if you are primarily a console user, you might want to use ivman. But nonetheless, they are all based on the same framework - HAL, and are for people with different needs.
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YD
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 01, 2005 7:13 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I mean, there are also different ways, non-HAL based. They conflict with HAL.
And I was saying about all the staff about Linux, not only about mounting devices on plug/insert.
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