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On Monday 05 February 2007, Douglas Linford wrote: |
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> Alan, |
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> |
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> |
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> Excuse the double post.... |
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|
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You mean the top post? Please don't do that, on mailing lists it's |
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considered rude |
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|
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> So...I am running Gnome 2.16.2 Is Gnome Volume Manager also |
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> managing the drives and partitions I have? |
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Yes |
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> And then what creates the volume name that is displayed on the |
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> desktop for that drive? |
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Gnome VFS (Virtual File System) reads it from various possible places, |
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like the file system label, or the disk drive description, or one of |
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the USB attributes in the case of USB storage devices. |
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|
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What VFS us trying to do is find a sensible descriptor to display to you |
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so you know what device it's talking about |
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> In my example I have a USB external drive with a ext3 partition, |
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> there is no listing in /etc/fstab for that partition, /etc/mtab lists |
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> it as, /dev/sdc2 /media/disk, and on the desktop the icon for it |
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> reads, 66.0 GB Volume. Where is that configured? |
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It isn't configured anywhere to my knowledge, but I'm not a Gnome user |
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and could be wrong. |
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Let me explain how this works: |
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The kernel knows about mount points and file systems. Somewhere it has a |
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function that performs a mount, and user space programs use this |
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function to accomplish the mount. One such program is "mount", which is |
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configured via /etc/fstab and mtab as you point out. "mount" is a |
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traditional program, been around for ages and we all know and love it. |
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It's even suid so regular users can use it if root puts "user" |
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or "users" in the options for a particular mount. |
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|
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"mount" is not the only way to mount stuff though. You can write any |
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user space program you want, and call it whatever you feel like, to |
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perform this system function called mounting. And you don't *have* to |
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consider /etc/fstab when doing it either. Now, "mount" worked fine for |
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years, but it all went belly up when pluggable storage devices came |
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out. A user expects to insert a flash disk or camera and to see the |
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files on it, and to not have to be root to do this. This effectively |
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makes mount unsuitable for pluggable devices. |
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|
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So KDE and Gnome have figured out other ways to mount stuff, and lately |
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the workable solutions have used hal to find devices and dbus to tell |
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apps about the device, all nicely configurable with GUI tools. They |
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don't use fstab either. |
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|
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You can cause interesting effects for yourself if you use an app like |
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supermount from Mandriva and also use KDE automounting. Supermount |
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modifies fstab, so this combination can result in the same device being |
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mounted twice at the same time - entirely possible but seldom what you |
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want :-) |
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I hope this helps, and that I correctly judged what you needed to know. |
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Now it's up to you to find the cute box to click to get the behaviour |
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you want. |
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|
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alan |
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|
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-- |
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Optimists say the glass is half full, |
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Pessimists say the glass is half empty, |
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Developers say wtf is the glass twice as big as it needs to be? |
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|
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Alan McKinnon |
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alan at linuxholdings dot co dot za |
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+27 82, double three seven, one nine three five |
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-- |
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gentoo-user@g.o mailing list |
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