RE: mounting/unmounting devices for newbies

["Fox, Kevin M" <KMFox mail bhi-erc com>]

I wouldnt think it would be too hard to get the kernel to turn off cache on
a floppy. If this is done, then whenever a person gets a directory listing
in the floppy mount point, it just rereads whats there, just like dos does
it.

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Michael ROGERS [SMTP:M.Rogers@cs.ucl.ac.uk]
> Sent:	Thursday, April 29, 1999 1:42 PM
> To:	gnome-list@gnome.org
> Subject:	Re: mounting/unmounting devices for newbies
> 
> 
> >what with mounting/unmounting drives, I am wondering how people expect
> >newbies to use removeable disks? As I see it, this is the major reason
> >that my mom couldn't use Gnome/Linux. I think that for most things,
> >window's way of dealing with disks makes a lot of sense if you don't
> >understand what's going on underneith. To the user, the fact that the
> >floppy/zip/cd is in the drive should mean that the computer sees it.
> 
> [I'm not sure if this is really a Gnome issue, but it's certainly a "make
> Unix friendly" issue, so I think it has a place on this list. Let me know
> if
> I'm spamming]
> 
>  AFAIK all removable media drives other than PC floppy drives can tell
> when a 
> disk is inserted or the eject button is pressed, so in theory the disk can
> be 
> automatically mounted or unmounted. This would require the device drivers
> to 
> notify the automounting tool of any disk change events, and the
> automounting 
> tool to mount new disks, or when the eject button is pressed, unmount the
> disk 
> and tell the drivers when it's safe to eject it. This would be a Good
> Thing.
> 
>  PC floppy drives are the exception, because they have a mechanical eject 
> button. I can't see any way of detecting disk changes, other than keeping
> the 
> drive spinning all the time, which is very ugly. The alternative is not to
> 
> mount floppies at all, but then you have to use special methods (like the 
> mtools package) for dealing with files on floppies, you can't "cd" to a 
> directory on a floppy, floppies will have to be treated specially by file 
> selectors, etc etc. This is even uglier.
> 
>  Users can get used to mounting removable disks, but it would be nice to
> have 
> everything automounted. Automounting everything except floppies is
> confusing
> and inconsistent, so floppy drives are stopping a generally useful feature
> 
> from being used. Does anyone know of a way to automount floppies or detect
> 
> disk changes on floppy drives?
> 
> 
> 
>  - Michael Rogers
> 
> 
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