Re: Floppy disk access in Gnome.

[George Farris <george gmsys com>]

Slow down son, no need to be hostile.

Look Nautilus has support for mounting and un-mounting floppy disks and
CD-ROM's, a kernel function to be sure BUT it is also a UI function.  If
it wasn't Eazel would never have added those menu's.

I agree it's a sticky problem.  The thing is, can we come up with a
solution that will allow the users that don't really want to know about
mounting to use the system without frustration.  This is where our
ingenuity can kick in.  There has to be a better solution than what
we've got at the moment.

The only thing I can think of right now is this:
Add to the GTK+ file dialog a function that checks the path for
/mnt/floppy.  If that is where a write or read is going to come from
then tell the user that the disk needs to be mounted.

This solution is just a simple communication issue with the user.  They
still have to take some action but at least the computer and the UI is
leading them through it.

Sure it's not 100% but at least we connect with the user.  Wasn't that
the whole thrust behind the SUN usability paper?  It's the user that
matters.



On Sun, 2001-10-28 at 19:53, Sean Middleditch wrote:
> Erg, at least you are admitting it's a kernel issue.  ~,^
> 
> That is were it ends.  What do you expect GNOME to do?  We can automount
> already, there are automounter projects currently available.  Make a GTK
> configuration program for them if you think it will help.
> 
> If you tie it to GNOME, then only GNOME apps will use it, not
> KDE/GTk/console/X/whatever apps; just GNOME ones.  That would be pretty
> damn stupid.
> 
> Even if you go with current automounters, one of the original issues
> brought up in this thread was when users just pull out disks.  Those
> will still get clobbered or whatnot, by the kenel, unless you constantly
> scan a mounted volume to see if it is still there, which would be damned
> ugly.  Perhaps a powerful automounting/autoumounting daemon could be
> conceived to handle even umounting, and mount CD's so they can still be
> ejected, and not fsck up audio CD's by scanning, etc.  And if it
> umounted after every usage, well... that might work, but would be dog
> slow.  Go ahead and write a floppy: accessor for gnome-vfs, tho, if you
> can write one that works fairly well, I'll certainly use it recommend it
> to people.  It would never be as robust as a system daemon or kernel
> level solution, tho.
> 
> As for an automoutning daemon, a configuration druid/dialog in GNOME is
> one thing, if such a magickal powerhouse automounting system was indeed
> created (which would be done by people working on the project, not
> whining on the GNOME list) then GNOME should definitely have a
> configuration dialog for it (if one is needed; I imagine a system may
> well just need some fstab entries and a daemon launched at start up; but
> perhaps autorun and whatnot could be added, who knows).  But that's all
> that belongs in GNOME.  People want a print control system in GNOME. 
> That is good.  They want print setup programs/dialogs.  That's great. 
> Writing our own damned printing daemon and print filters is ludicrous. 
> There is no difference with removable media mounting (or network
> mounting, for that matter).
> 
> I know it's now well understood it's a kernel issue.  Next it must be
> understood that it is *not* a GNOME issue.  It is a kernel issue, and
> possibly a system-level daemon issue.  That's where it belongs. 
> Otherwise, we might as well write our own network filesystem server,
> print daemon, file system, networking protocol, VM manager, etc.
> 
> Then I can tell all my friends I use GNOME OS.  (well, my friends don't
> give a damn about UNIX, so they'd probably just ignore me about it, but
> still).
> 
> On Sun, 2001-10-28 at 07:30, George Farris wrote:
> > Great Sean we already know it's a kernel issue.
> > 
> > I acknowledged this and then I asked "What can we do".  The answer of
> > "it's a kernel issue" isn't really an answer. it's just acknowledging
> > something we already know.
> > 
> > We have a user interface issue here. If you don't believe that I'm sorry
> > but... we still have to deal with the problem.  The average user only
> > sees GNOME.
> > 
> > So are there any suggestions?  Has anybody talked to kernel people about
> > this.  And yes Sean supermount works but it's buggy and people can't
> > even find the latest patches.
> > 
> > We just can't turn our heads and believe this will go away.  By at least
> > writing this email it's a start.
> > 
> > Do you have any constructive suggestions.
> > 
> > Maybe something in the gnome file system layer that when a person tries
> > to save a file in /mnt/floppy it traps that request and says"  I'm about
> > to mount the floppy disk, please insert a diskette" and then
> > automatically un-mounts it after the write.
> > 
> > Is this difficult?  It would at least address some part of the issue.
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > On Sun, 2001-10-28 at 09:33, Sean Middleditch wrote:
> > 
> > -- 
> > George Farris - VE7FRG
> > George gmsys com
> > _______________________________________________
> > gnome-list mailing list
> > gnome-list gnome org
> > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-list
> 
> 
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-- 
George Farris - VE7FRG
George gmsys com