Re: X Terminal and local volume access

[Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com>]

On Sun, 2005-10-30 at 20:56 +0100, Jakub Piotr Clapa wrote:
> I thought about making local volumes available in the Nautilus computer: 
> view.
> 
> I have a plan on how to do this and I would be really thankful if you 
> could comment on this.
> 
> On the terminal client:
> 1. do some udev/hal magic to forward cdrom events to the terminal server
> 2. accept ssh connections for invoking of (u)mount commands and network 
> filesystem mounting (using shfs on the server)
> 
> On the terminal server:
> 1. get the gnome vfs to return custom volumes and drives list (based on 
> what the thin client advertises rather than the contents of the the 
> server's fstab)
> 2. implement custom mount commands which would forward the requests to 
> the thin clients
> 
> I've looked at the gnome-vfs code but still would like to hear your 
> opinion to be sure it would be done optimally.
> 
> If this could be done in a GoodWay(TM) it could be merged into official 
> gnome-vfs for the benefit of the whole Linux terminal server community 
> but I could maintain a set of my own patches.

The original idea of the volume type GNOME_VFS_VOLUME_TYPE_VFS_MOUNT was
for things like this. You'd have a module API that lets you plug in code
that "looks for volume mounts/unmounts and drive plugins/out". On
startup of the daemon, all such modules will be loaded and activated,
and when one of the modules detects a new volume (for instance a USB
device that doesn't use USB-storage is plugged in) then it can create a
new volume of type GNOME_VFS_VOLUME_TYPE_VFS_MOUNT pointing to a custom
uri like cooldevice://bus/usbid/ or something.

You could use the same system to look for remote volumes.

This hasn't been written yet, but I don't expect it to be all that hard.
The nice thing about running code in the daemon is that you get a nice
context with guarantees about a running mainloop. 

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
 Alexander Larsson                                            Red Hat, Inc 
                   alexl redhat com    alla lysator liu se 
He's a genetically engineered gay photographer fleeing from a secret 
government programme. She's a transdimensional communist barmaid who believes 
she is the reincarnation of an ancient Egyptian queen. They fight crime!