CDs mount to volume name

[John Morris]

On Thu, 2006-02-09 at 03:03, Karsten Fischer wrote:

> Easily. I put in a media called "Tax2005" and its is mounted
> on /media/Tax2005, regardless of which drive
> (DVD-ROM,CD-ROM,DVD/CD-Writer, CD-Writer) I use.

And for your use that is a good thing.  Been lurking on this thread and
pondering.  I think everyone is seeing a part of the elephant.  I'd like
to back up and try to see the whole critter.

Way I see it there are a variety of competing visions here, none of
which satify everyone. But when we boil it down we are looking at the
problem of what to do with removable media.  These are the factors I see
going into the decision process:

1.  The volume name

2.  The device the media is inserted into.  For this purpose we must
count USB ports individually as devices, probably even allow for ports
on hubs to be declared a seperate 'device.'

>From this we have to have a way to decide where it gets mounted AND
something so far left out of the discussion, which user/process/virtual
machine owns it.  No one solution can possibly cover every circumstance
so we need a way to configure it.  Some sample use cases that stress the
current systems:

1.  An authentication system that expects a user to insert a USB key
into the left front panel USB slot before logging on.  This case needs
the key mounted in a fixed location. Post login the USB drive may or may
not be available on the user's desktop.  If we want it accessable it
needs to be owned by the user on display hostname:0.0.

2.  The system has two heads.  One user logs onto the primary console
and owns any media inserted into the internal optical drive or the front
panel USB ports.  A second user connects to the second head and has a
USB keyboard/mouse.  They own any media inserted into the rear USB ports
(on a USB extension cord) or the external USB DVD recorder sitting in
their workspace.

Perhaps in the this case it might make sense to posit a ~/media
directory and mount each user's volumes within.

3.  Combine #1 & #2.

4.  A Xen/VMWare/Vnc/etc virtual machine/session is given one or more
devices.  Currently when a CD is inserted it gets mounted by the native
desktop, which has been known to be a major PITA when the intention is
to use it in VMWare.

Whether such a far ranging discussion is on topic for this list is a
good question.

-- 
John M.      http://www.beau.org/~jmorris     This post is 100% M$Free!
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