Why fstab settings changed automatically since dropline?
 

Hello fellow Slackers,

I've been able to install dropline gnome a few days ago. But now I just noticed something in /etc/fstab.

In the past (before dropline) I used Icewm and mounted my CD-recorder and DVD-recorder under /mnt/cdrom and /mnt/dvdrom.

But now when I setup my fstab to mount these 2 drives that way, the mount path is automatically changed to /mnt/cdrom for the CD drive and to /media/cdrecorder for the dvd-drive.

My windows HD's are still mounted in /mnt

- Why are some drives mounted in /mnt and others in /media now?

- HOw come my settings in fstab get changed automatically?

- is it gnome or kernel 2.6 who changes the fstab (I updated to kernel 2.6 together with dropline)

Thanks very much!

Someday I've read about fstab-sync implemented in HAL and about similar product called pmonitor. They automagicaly change contents of /etc/fstab by hw detection. Maybe Dropline delivers hal with this "utility". If it regulary changes I'd suggest to stop hal daemon by something like /etc/rc.d/rc.hald stop, repair fstab and check if this annoyance stops.
May be it's caused by something else, but I've never experienced such behaviour in Slack.

I wonder if you could use a sed filter before you build HAL similar to the rpm.SlackBuild script? :scratch: I never much cared for the whole /media directory... Food for thought. It should work. Maybe...

This is from HAL's fstab-sync. This functionality is primarily for removable media.

The paths in /media/ are part of the Linux filesystem hierarchy standards. Slackware is perhaps the only distribution today that neglects to use this.

http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-...EDIAMOUNTPOINT

As there are some users that still love being back in the UNIX stoneage and manually mounting CDROMs and USB drives, you can discontinue the use of the HAL automounter by disabling the rc.hal stuff in /etc/rc.d/ . However, these features are desired by the majority of Dropline GNOME users, and they are enabled by default. You will find that all of the Slackware GNOME desktops (Dropline/FRG/Gware) make use of HAL, which interfaces with the 2.6 kernels (HAL probably kicked on after you updated your kernel, as the script checks for it on startup). It's hard to tell if Slackware will ever officially adopt HAL, but since KDE and other desktops are also making use of it, it's very likely to appear in a future release if the userbase demands it.

Alternately, if you must insist on using /mnt/ , you may modify the policy to use it instead of /media/ .

/usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/10osvendor/10-storage-policy.fdi

You can copy that file to a subdirectory of /usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/ to create your own policy. Modify it to use /mnt/ instead of /media/, and save it.

If you need more assistance, you should be able to search google or the Dropline forums on how to properly edit this file to make it automount to the preferred location.