automounting cd-rom & cd-rw devices

[Andy Miller]

On Sat, Mar 27, 2004 at 08:13:39PM -0600, Jay Moore wrote:
> I have a FreeBSD 4.9 system; I am also running KDE...
> 
> I'm building this system for my son (college student) who has been (until now) 
> a Windoze user :(   I'm trying to set this sytem up so that he'll be able to 
> use it with a minimum of calls to tech support (me). One of the issues I am 
> struggling with is how to make the cd-rw & cd-rom devices usable without 
> requiring him to start a root shell and mount/umount these devices.
> 
> There appear to be some KDE applications that support this, but they must be 
> started with root permissions. I figured automounting cd's must be a "FAQ", 
> so I researched the FreeBSD website, and Greg Lehey's book to find "the 
> answer". Unfortuantely, I found very little info. The only good source of 
> "how-to" on this subject was a rather dated article that described 
> configuring amd to do this: 
> 
> http://www.daemonnews.org/200202/automounting.html
> 
> The dearth of sources of info on this lead me to wonder if automounting the cd 
> drives is something that should be done at all. So - my questions are:
> 
> 1) Should I automount cd's?
> 
> 2) What is the "best way" to allow ordinary users to mount cd's?
> 
> Thanks,
> Jay Moore
> 
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I believe sudo(8) may be an option for you.  It will allow you to give users root privilages for specific commands.  Just install sudo from ports.  There are some good examples in the sudoers config file for what you want to do.

-Andy