Re: Disk Eject with gnome drivemount applet

[John Ellis <johne bellatlantic net>]

Gregor Hofflei writes:

>Ok, I see that eject can be supported that way by the current
>drivemount.
>
>An other thing that I'd like to see implemented in drivemount is
>support for different file system types on a single drive and mount
>point. This is something that isn't doable with /etc/fstab.
>
>E.g., I have Zip disks with vfat, ext2fs and ufs file
>systems. Currently, my /etc/fstab lists these potential mounts with
>separate mount points (also note sdc vs. sdc4):
>
>/dev/sdc        /mnt/nzip       ufs     defaults,noauto,ro,user 0 0
>/dev/sdc4       /mnt/lzip       ext2    defaults,noauto,user    0 0
>/dev/sdc4       /mnt/dzip       vfat    defaults,noauto,user    0 0
>
>I see this as a cludge, since I would need three drivemount
>applets. Instead, I'd like to have a single applet that subsequently
>tries to mount either of these mounts on /mnt/zip.
>
>I tried to implement this using wrapper scripts named mount and umount
>in the path of drivemount (umount would also do an automatic eject),
>but I failed to find a working solution. The mount script was quite
>straightforward, umount made trouble ejecting the correct device.
>
>The main problem was that the drivemount applet tried to resolve the
>mount point (/mnt/zip) using /etc/fstab, which had to fail (/dev/sdc
>against /dev/sdc4). Certainly somehow it would have been possible to
>put all of the logic in the wrapper scripts and let them care for
>resolving the device paths and the mount points, but that looked like
>a big hack.
>
>I don't know if this is so much an unusual situation that nobody else
>faces this problem.  For me, this looks like a nice reason to
>make drivemount smarter about the real mount/umount/eject process

As the original writer of drivemount, I think you are asking too much of
the program, it was only intended to be a frontend to mount/unmount.

I believe what you want is filesystem autodetection, and even mount
doesn't do that. If you (or anyone) wanted autodetection, perhaps
the program the feature should be added to is mount.
 
I'm sure your situation is not unique. I almost had this problem, but
decided to keep all my zip disks vfat for just this reason: simplicity.

My 20 cents worth (with inflation),
John
--
John Ellis <johne@bellatlantic.net>
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Haven/5235/