CD/DVD/USB and mounting...

[darose-prQxUZoa2zOsTnJN9+BGXg at public.gmane.org (David Rosenstrauch)]

Scott Ehrlich wrote:
> I insert a CD, DVD, or USB stick into a system.   It doesn't mount.   I 
> use the window manager to visit my Computer and double-click the device 
> (CD or USB drive).   Suddenly, the device mounts.
> 
> What process is permitting that to happen?   I tried some googling, but 
> can't seem to capture the right words or contexts for appropriate hits.
> I thought it might be autofs - I tried to stop/start it, but it didn't 
> do anything.
> 
> It would obviously be nice to know for init 3 (or simply non X) sessions 
> when I insert media and want to access it.   I don't want to have to 
> visit /var/log/messages each time, either, unless that's the only way to 
> do it, to see the device it is seen as and mount it.   If that's the 
> only way, then so be it.
> 
> Thanks for your answers/insights.
> 
> Scott

Assuming you're running a recent distro, dbus and hal is probably the 
answer.  KDE and Gnome both have the capability to monitor Dbus/HAL 
these days.


What this means in a nutshell is that dbus & hal monitor your hardware 
and notify whoever's interested when something changes.  KDE and Gnome 
listen to those notifications and then do the right thing of popping up 
an appropriate dialog asking you to take action.

So on my machine, when I insert a CD, a thumb drive, or my iPod, KDE 
pops up a nice dialog asking me if I want to open the contents in Konqueror.


BTW, autofs, IIUC, is a way for you to set up things that you want to 
automatically get mounted the first time you access them.  We use autofs 
here with our network shares.  The first time I try to look at something 
on one of the shares, the share gets mounted.  To some extent you want 
the behavior that autofs provides, but autofs doesn't monitor hardware, 
so it's not really the right choice here.


So I'm guessing that if you get the dbus and hal daemons running on your 
box that should take care of this issue.

HTH,

DR

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