automounting cd-rom & cd-rw devices

[Matthew Seaman]

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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