You know what its like discovering something you've had for many years, but not known about?

Well, I've been using Slackware as my full time OS at home since 1998. Since then, I've toyed with many different tools & add-ons which are supposed to make mounting CDs and USB devices easier.

I ran supermount for about 6 months, but was never truly happy with it - you had to apply kernel patches, which sorta tainted my otherwise stock system. I spent about a day (about a year ago) trying to get DBUS & HAL working.

In the end, I just gave in. I added a few lines to my /etc/fstab file and continued using mount & umount to do things.

Fast forward to 3rd April 2006. I read something about this thing called "autofs" and how easy it was to configure in Slackware. All I had to do was download a file called "rc.autofs" and copy some files from /usr/doc/autofs-3.1.7/samples/auto.* to /etc and modify them to suit my needs. I also had to re-compile the kernel to include autofs support.

But it was worth it. One word: SLICK.

Now, CDs, DVDs, USB sticks & memory card readers auto mount when I change into their mount point directory. And un-mounting is as simple as "cd .."

I set up some simple symlinks to make it a bit easier for myself. And it works well with KDE too. I set up some "Links to URL" pointing to my symlinks. All I have to do is insert random media, and click its icon in KDE to mount it. Unmounting is as simple as closing the Konqueror window for that device. Press the button on the CD drive AND THE DISC COMES OUT!!

I love it. This should be the default behaviour on Slackware.

So simple, yet so elegant.

If you're still reading, sorry for the above babbling, but I just can't believe how I've overlooked this for so long.

Ciao,

I've often said that learning linux is like going on vacation someplace really cool, but not having a map or a guide or anything that tells you where to find all the "good" stuff.

More often than not you end up finding things by accident. Hiding in plain sight.

That's the main reason I read forums and newsgroups. Other peoples problems and solutions teach me as much about linux as anything.

I agree tho - none of the mount solutions out there have really thrilled me either. I haven't explored this one yet. I do need to build a new kernel so perhaps I'll play.

Personally I do everything manually. Only when it gets boring I automate things. This way I know what I have to do when an automated thing doesn't work for some reason. This is why I'm using Slackware and not some other "user-friendly" *cough* distro.

Oh, I know what to do alright. Been mounting & unmounting CDs, DVDs, USB sticks, etc manually for 8 years now. It is very nice to be able to automate the procedure in a manner that suits me.

The things I like about autofs:

1. It only requires 3 text files under /etc to work. The rest of it is installed as a part of standard Slackware. The package name is autofs-3.1.7.

2. I don't have to use it. I can still mount things the old way if I choose.

3. It auto unmounts CDs & DVDs. So, when you press the eject button, the tray opens. Full stop.

4. It doesn't automatically pop things up on my desktop. Things happen when I say they can.

5. It integrates so nicely with the Slackware philosophy.

Even if you like mounting/unmounting removable media by hand, give it a shot. I guarantee you'll be impressed.

I know and use autofs features for years but only on desktop. I would never automount a device on a server.

One of the biggest problems with automounting is that this often interferes when a program needs to install. Say UT2004 with multiple CDs.

Automounting in SUSE kept interfering like hell and I couldn't mount and unmount properly in the end. I gave up installing UT 2004 on SUSE, but in Debian, with the manual mount and unmount, it worked smoothly. Also sometimes it's necessary to have a device or a drive unmounted while performing certain operations for security.

Autofs may be a boon to some people, but not to everybody in all situations.

Hope I haven't dampened your enthusiasm. Linux is not designed to work like windows and personally it makes a lot of sense to manually mount and unmount media after years of irritation with that stupid Windows "autorun" popups.

Automounting != Autorunning.

Autorunning is one of the worst ideas ever and is a huge security risk (as Sony recently demonstrated so perfectly with their invasive root-kits).

Does this still work if you have a terminal open who's current directory is on the CD's mount point?
One of my biggest pet peeves is when you have to hunt through a dozen terminals scattered across four work spaces to find which one is still "using" the device when all I want to do is quickly eject my CD.

geeman, I have to disagree. Automounting is very similar to autorunning and its annoyances far outweight any minor convenience of automounting. Manual mount is 100 times better...

In many cases, mounting is just as simple as a single right-click to mount (from a desktop environment say) and so it's not even that big a problem to mount and unmount if you're a gui user.

Why distros want to implement auto-detecting and mounting (like SUSE does) is beyond me. Unless it wants to imitate Windows which is a very bad idea.

What about us fluxbox users who don't believe in desktops?

But automounting doesn't actually execute anything off of the mounted volume unless you tell it to. It just prepares the volume in case you'd later want to access it (which 99% of the time is what you want to do after inserting a non-blank CD/DVD)

I'm just curious what you think the annoyances of automounting are?
I'm not saying there aren't any, but I can't think of any and would be interested to hear what they might be.

Use gkrellm and set it up to show mount points.

Like I mentioned before, when I was installing ut2004 from a CD, this annoyed me so much because the CD kept automounting while the installer wanted to do it manually and then when it was asking for the next CD, I couldn't unmount the damn thing or eject it. This conflict resulted in the problem of not being able to install it at all even when it was mounted because the automounter in SUSE messed up user permissions while mounting.

There are other potential problems of having automount. Like this might interfere with the CD burning or DVD burning process (I'm just assuming since many distros warn against mounting a drive when CD writing is in progress).

It would be only your fault if you would try to eject a cd while it is being written and it would get corrupted.

Alien_Hominid, it would not be my fault when a computer program decides when to mount or umount or eject a drive...

The point is, I would prefer to be 100% in control, not depend on the "AI" of a computer script to decide what's good for me.

Automounting is not random mounting or unmounting. It only takes action when command is passed from user sphere or low-level interface (like cdrom button). And I really believe that it's not possible for automount to unmount a drive which is being written into. However, not tried and of course can be wrong. If automount has some bugs, it is not the bad conception (like automount is bad, don't use automount) but a bug in the program which could be fixed. It's the same as udev in Slackware, which also has some drawbacks but we all try to get it working despite of some constant problems. Issue with ut2004 installation could be fixed and there would be one cons less.

Is manual mounting so difficult that you need a program to do it every time? Look at the relatively small advantages of automounting... and compare it with potential issues that might arise out of it.

Linux developers weren't so stupid. They have a reason why users should mount and unmount devices manually. Some things are designed to work in that situation. Just because automounting might work well for some users, doesn't make it a good feature.

I am not very experienced, but I can still see problems in this area if a system bypasses certain design constraints just to make it more "user-friendly".