Date: Thu, 04 Jan 2001 18:47:41 -0600 From: David Kelly <dkelly@hiwaay.net> To: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in> Cc: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: desktops and mounting Message-ID: <200101050047.f050lfp24092@grumpy.dyndns.org> In-Reply-To: Message from Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in> of "Thu, 04 Jan 2001 11:50:26 %2B0100." <20010104115026.B10414@lpt.ens.fr>
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Rahul Siddharthan writes: > Recently while setting up a FreeBSD machine for desktop use, and > watching linux users on their machines, it seemed to me that > everything that can be done on linux can be done equally easily on > FreeBSD -- except non-root mounting of removable media (like floppies, > CDROMs). You can't allow user mounts simply by adding a "user" option > in /etc/fstab, and simple point-and-clicking in KDE/GNOME doesn't work > either. Something I keep in mind to suggest The Next Time Somebody Asks If There Is Something Neat That Needs To Be Done, is to suggest a userland super error checked filesystem driver. The idea being quick and safe access to removable media. A corrupt mounted filesystem can bring most any Unix system down so I think this code outside of the kernel should take its time to be safe. For floppies /usr/ports/emulation/mtools/ works very well. It doesn't mount the floppy but allows files to be copied to/from, listed, directories created, and everything short of being able to easily use the floppy as storage for other running processes. Would be pretty neat if mtools would do the same for CDROM as it currently does for floppies. Maybe it does? Another neat thing such a utility could do is to import SMB and AppleShare shares. Could be even nicer if it was to automatically lock down permissions on anything I mount from others on the system. Maybe even hide from the mount table. SGI uses a process outside of the kernel for dealing with Zip, CDROM, and floppy drives. Found if you have 40k or 50k of files on a CDROM that it can be pretty slow but if its default directory cache was kicked up from 1MB to 2MB my problem was cured. Clearly it was caching outside of the kernel's filesystem space. May be this is something they are giving away these days? -- David Kelly N4HHE, dkelly@hiwaay.net ===================================================================== The human mind ordinarily operates at only ten percent of its capacity -- the rest is overhead for the operating system. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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