Mounting CDs/DVDs via HAL under a specific mountpoint?

Wintershade · 02-21-2010, 01:41 PM

Hello again. I'm trying to make HAL mount my CD and DVD discs under a specific mountpoint (such as "/media/optical_disc", rather than "/media/<disc_label>". I understand from the Arch Linux Wiki it's possible for the media which gets recognized by it's uuid.
If someone could help me do it with optical disks, I'd be very grateful.

Thanks in advance!

hiok · 03-01-2010, 06:55 PM

I have an entry here in my /etc/fstab:

/dev/sdb2 /mnt/ipod vfat uid=1001,gid=100,users,noauto 0 0
/dev/sr0 /mnt/cdrom auto ro,noauto,users 0 0

Whenever I connect the ipod thing or put a data disc in the tray and close it, gnome-volume-manager, working over HAL, mounts them in the places specified in the fstab.

The only think is you have to know the device names: in my case, the optical discs are /dev/sr0. You should check yours and use it accordingly.

As far as I understand it, you shouldn't use /media for that, but /mnt instead.

If you really need /media, which I'm not sure would be good practice, or even work, you could make a symbolic link there pointing to /mnt/cdrom, for instance.

SaintDanBert · 03-01-2010, 07:36 PM

Years ago I learned to do this with mount points:

Code:

user@host:path$ cd /mnt
user@host:path$ # create your mount point folders
user@host:path$ sudo mkdir mntPnt1
user@host:path$ ...
user@host:path$ sudo mkdir mntPnt99
user@host:path$ # if they will not be mounted all the time, you might
user@host:path$ # forget why these folders exist ... especially when you
user@host:path$ # put them somewhere other than /mnt
user@host:path$ ...
user@host:path$ sudo touch mntPnt1/_THIS_IS_A_MOUNT_POINT_.txt
user@host:path$ ...
user@host:path$ sudo mkdir mntPnt99/_THIS_IS_A_MOUNT_POINT_.txt

In really complex situations, I even put remarks into the text file to explain what I use each mount point for.

Another aspect of this trick shows up if the mount fails for whatever reason. Any time I list the folder content and see this file (and maybe
others) I know immediately that something went haywire during the mount
request or there was some other forced umount.

Cheers,
~~~ 0;-Dan

Wintershade · 04-07-2010, 03:29 PM

Hi everyone... sorry for the delay and for resurrecting the old topic. I've been away for a while, and now I've managed to get what I want.
I've created a new HAL policy file (in /etc/hal/fdi/policy on Arch Linux, elsewhere on other distros TTBOMK) called 20-disc.fdi, which contains the follwing configuration:

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
 <deviceinfo version="0.2">
  <device>
   <match key="volume.is_disc" bool="true">
    <merge key="volume.label" type="string">disc</merge>
   </match>
  </device>
</deviceinfo>

From now on, every optical disc I insert into my computer will be mounted under /media/disc. Voila, desired effect achieved!

Thanks everyone for the help.