Re: can't eject data CD's

[Sean Middleditch <sean middleditch iname com>]

Desmond Rivet wrote:

> What the heck is Supermount? I thought the whole mounting/unmounting issue
> was built into the underying design of any UNIX like system...how can one
> just get rid of it?
>
> Not that it doesn't sound like a good idea...mounting CDs and
> floppies just seems silly...
>

It's a patch for the kernel.  See, the devices ARE mounted... but how it changes is,
Supermount detects when media changes.  So, if you try to "cd" into /mnt/cdrom and
there's no CD, you get an I/O error.  If there is, you go into it.  Eject the CD, and
type "ls", and you get an IO error.  Put in a new CD, and supermount checks it.  Same
for floppies and (I assume) hard-disks.  I dunno about network filesystems (but
there's the kernel automounter for that).  In any case, it starts behaving just like
other OSes that do without mounting.  There can be some pauses here and there when
supermount is checking for media (only when you try to access the mount point), but
it's no more than the wait for the actual mount if you're using a conventional Linux
kernel.

The internals, I don't know about.  Download the kernel 2.2.16 RPMs from the Mandrake
site or its mirrors and check thru it.  I don't see why other distros don't start
shipping with it... It's perhaps the nicest feature in any Linux customization I've
ever seen.  And it's been around since Mandrake 7.0.

>
> ----------------------------------------------
> Desmond Rivet          rivet@ecf.utoronto.ca
> Eng Sci 0T0 + PEY      rivet_d@hotmail.com
>
>    You live and learn, or you don't live long

Sean Middleditch