automounting cd-rom & cd-rw devices
Matthew Seaman
m.seaman at infracaninophile.co.uk
Sun Mar 28 15:23:04 PST 2004
On Sun, Mar 28, 2004 at 02:58:01PM -0600, Jay Moore wrote:
> On Sunday 28 March 2004 12:44 am, Malcolm Kay wrote:
> > On Sunday 28 March 2004 11:43, 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) <snip >...
> > > </snip> ................... how to make the cd-rw & cd-rom devices
> > > usable without requiring him to start a root shell and mount/umount these
> > > devices.
>
> > > 1) Should I automount cd's?
> >
> > Depends what you mean by auto-mount
>
> Good point... I guess what I'd really meant is automount in the Windoze sense
> of the word; i.e. if I put a music cd in I can play music, if I put a data cd
> in I can read the files. I (regular joe user) don't have to su, or sudo to
> mount the device, and if I put a music cd in I don't cause a panic by trying
> to mount the device as a file system. In short, I want an automount that can
> figure out whether I've got a music cd or a file system, and "do the right
> thing".
>
> > > 2) What is the "best way" to allow ordinary users to mount cd's?
> >
> > The best way is inevitably a matter of opinion.
> > But it can be done without installing any additional ports.
>
> I found a fairly complete (although slightly dated) recipe for using the amd
> and sysctl functions to handle automounting for regular users at this URL:
>
> http://www.daemonnews.org/200202/automounting.html
>
> But there are two things that concern me:
> 1) once the file system cd is mounted, a fixed amount of "no activity" time
> must pass before it is umount'd
> 2) security implications ?!!
>
> Item 1) is a concern mostly 'cause it's just kind of kludge ("oh yeah, I have
> to wait for 60 seconds before I can eject my data cd"). Item 2) is a concern
> 'cause college campuses are the most hostile network environments I've ever
> seen.
>
> I don't mean to sound critical (really)... maybe there's just no good way to
> do this in FreeBSD. If that's the case, maybe WinXP is the best route for the
> "average user".
Sounds like what you want is vold(8) and associated utilities:
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=vold&apropos=0&sektion=0&manpath=SunOS+5.9&format=html
Unfortunately, I don't think anyone has ported it from Solaris yet,
although there is this:
http://vold.sourceforge.net/
There's also 'autodiskmount' on MacOSX which fulfils a similar
function, which might be an easier thing to port.
http://www.hmug.org/man/8/autodiskmount.html
Cheers,
Matthew
--
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil. 26 The Paddocks
Savill Way
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey Marlow
Tel: +44 1628 476614 Bucks., SL7 1TH UK
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