First boot with 20040908 changes

Steve G linux_4ever at yahoo.com
Fri Sep 10 17:27:42 UTC 2004


>However, when you log in to GNOME then gnome-volume-manager, in the
>default configuration, mounts all the drives as the user who is logging
>in. And unmounts them at logout. I think this is sane given the options
>put in /etc/fstab.
>
> /dev/sda1 /media/compact_flash vfat 
>rw,sync,noatime,nodiratime,nosuid,nodev,uid=500,gid=500,fmask=0022,dmask=0022 0
0
>
>Note the nosuid,nodev options thanks to having user in the fstab line.
>
>So, I hope we can agree this is pretty safe?

The damage comes from xattr. Suppose I have a machine that boots Mandrake,
debian, and FC3. I use the /opt as a pass between the the various OS's. It is on
its own partition. One of these days, the mount count triggers a fsck. I don't
want it to write anything to the drive if it can mess it up. Again, the problem
is xattrs and the older OS's not handling them.

<rant> Its too late now, but I think allowing xattrs into ext3 was a big mistake
from a backwards compatibility stance. It should have been ext4. Sure, the bugs
in ext3 would still be there waiting to bite you, but you won't face them every
single day.</rant>

Can you detect a ext3 drive that doesn't have xattrs applied? If so, the work
around is not to write anything related to xattrs to that drive.

>I'm not sure how well turning off media detection works presently

Something changed after yesterday's updates. I set everything to false yesterday
and there were no entries in /media and fstab. Today they are there.

>(I test it once in a while though) and I think g-v-m
>ignores the automount hint. When Nautilus and GNOME VFS is ready, this
>will be supported as well [1]. 

Then the answer is not to make the drive available. There should probably be a
configuration option that says do not update fstab with detected media and
another for do not create mount points for detected media. This way, people that
cannot afford to get a corrupted partition from xattrs being written to a
partition that a NON-SE Linux OS must access can avoid damage. 

>There is supposed to be a /media/cdrom mount point if you got a CD-ROM drive;

OK, I don't see one. The following is from an earlier e-mail to the list that I
didn't get a chance to answer:

>This should work. What does 'udevinfo -r -q name -p /block/hdc' say?

/dev/hdc

>Does running 'service haldaemon stop; udevstart; service
>haldaemon start' solve your problem? 

No.
[root at buildhost root]# ls /media/
idedisk  idedisk1  scsidisk  scsidisk1

[root at buildhost root]# service haldaemon stop
Stopping HAL daemon:                                       [FAILED]
[root at buildhost root]# udevstart
[root at buildhost root]# service haldaemon start
Starting HAL daemon:                                       [  OK  ]
/etc/init.d/haldaemon: line 31: /var/run/hald/pid: No such file or directory

>Otherwise you need to file a bug against hal to we can fix it

Does the above look like a bug? If so I will file one.

Thanks,
-Steve Grubb


		
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