Easy USB-drive automounter and "filemanager" for nontechies?

[Dave]

On Friday 02 February 2007 00:52, Chris Shenton wrote:
> I'm a longtime FreeBSD user but my S.O. just barely uses the machines
> -- Pine and Firefox mostly.  Doesn't even know she has a homedir or
> that there's a bunch of stuff in it.
>
> She now has a digital recorder with a 1GB CF card that interfaces to
> computers with a USB cable and she needs to get files off of.  She can
> plug it into USB OK but -- as her sysadm -- I have to mount it and
> copy the files off, then unmount.
>
> I'm looking for something like she'd get on a Mac or PC:
>
> 1. a way to automount the USB 'drive' when she plugs in
> 2. a visual filemanager or some other friendly way for her to see
>    files and copy them off so she can mail them or whatnot.
> 3. a way to safely unmount the USB device when she's done
>
> I'm starting to play with the user-priv mounting, then will look at
> telling usbd to mount the drive when it sees it... Is this is the
> right technical solution?
>
> I've got no idea about friendly GUI/filemanager with drag-n-drop or
> other easy way to get files off.  She's using simple olde FVWM2 now
> and I'd prefer not to load up a massive GUI like KDE or Gnome.  I just
> don't know what's out there, being a command line dinosuar myself.
>
> Any recommendations?
>
> Thanks.

Not specifically what you are asking for but you might consider a shell script 
behind a desktop/menu icon to mount the device, sync the files with a 
directory on the HDD and then unmount it.  That way she doesn;t have to worry 
about pulling it while it's mounted amd can work in the "safe" environment of 
the HDD.

Something like:
(cobbled up from a couple of scripts I use, could use more error trapping)

#find and mount device
camcontrol devlist | grep USB2.0\ \(FS\)\ FLASH\ DISK\ 1.00 > /dev/null 2>&1
if [ "$?" -eq "0" ]; then
  dev=`camcontrol devlist | grep USB2.0\ \(FS\)\ FLASH\ DISK\ 1.00 | 
grep -o 'da[0-9][0-9]*'`
  if [ `df | grep $dev | grep -o 'da[0-9][0-9]*'` ]; then
    echo MP3Player already mounted
  else
    mount_msdosfs /dev/${dev} /home/dave/mp3player ;
    echo Mounted MP3Player to ~/mp3player as /dev/${dev}
  fi
else
  echo MP3Player not plugged in
fi

#sync directory with device
rsync -rv --ignore-existing --delete /home1/audiobooks/0mp3/ ~/mp3player

#unmount device
if [ `df | grep mp3player | grep -o 'da[0-9][0-9]*'` ]; then
  umount ~/mp3player ; i=1 ;
  echo MP3Player safely un-mounted
fi