From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Dec 31 03:41:58 2014 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:1900:2254:206a::19:1]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher AECDH-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 16F54A33 for ; Wed, 31 Dec 2014 03:41:58 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mx02.qsc.de (mx02.qsc.de [213.148.130.14]) (using TLSv1 with cipher DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (Client did not present a certificate) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id A0DE317FE for ; Wed, 31 Dec 2014 03:41:57 +0000 (UTC) Received: from r56.edvax.de (port-92-195-39-170.dynamic.qsc.de [92.195.39.170]) (using TLSv1 with cipher DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by mx02.qsc.de (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 331082767C; Wed, 31 Dec 2014 04:41:48 +0100 (CET) Received: from r56.edvax.de (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by r56.edvax.de (8.14.5/8.14.5) with SMTP id sBV3flRn001995; Wed, 31 Dec 2014 04:41:47 +0100 (CET) (envelope-from freebsd@edvax.de) Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2014 04:41:47 +0100 From: Polytropon To: Warren Block Subject: Re: Xwindow advise needed Message-Id: <20141231044147.fe7a9983.freebsd@edvax.de> In-Reply-To: References: <55358.128.135.70.2.1419874589.squirrel@cosmo.uchicago.edu> <20141229235045.b8156cdf.freebsd@edvax.de> Reply-To: Polytropon Organization: EDVAX X-Mailer: Sylpheed 3.1.1 (GTK+ 2.24.5; i386-portbld-freebsd8.2) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org, galtsev@kicp.uchicago.edu X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.18-1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2014 03:41:58 -0000 On Mon, 29 Dec 2014 20:25:53 -0700 (MST), Warren Block wrote: > On Mon, 29 Dec 2014, Polytropon wrote: > > > > For a long time, Xfce has been considered the "less fatty > > desktop" in comparison to the "big players" Gnome and KDE. > > But with the growing incompatibilities btweeen FreeBSD and > > Linux (the system Xfce is primarily being developed on and > > for), you might experience missing functionality. > > I use xfce. The only thing that does not work on FreeBSD, as far as I > know, is automounting. There are other ways to do that. I just > manually mount stuff. Otherwise, xfce has the standard desktop features > without being resource-hungry or having a huge list of dependencies. The problem is not the automounter itself. It's its integration with the GUI elements, in two ways: 1st, when the automounter mounts a device which has been appearing, either by a label or by a device name, this new mountpoint must be "picked up" by the GUI and be shown on the desktop. 2nd, there must be a desktop action to unmount the device, and for those which support it, eject it. This is what "ordinary users" seem to expect. I didn't get that working in Xfce, and also failed with Gnome 2 (even though I followed the advice on the project page exactly). I somehow got the additional port automounter to do what HAL + DBUS were unable to do. To perform the umount, I still had to replace the _binary_ with a script, including a terrible tale of sudo, -f, and camcontrol eject. That was the time when I stopped worrying and love the insanity. :-) I'm quite confident that, given a proper configuration and permissions, this _won't_ be neccessary in Xfce. By the way, how about suggesting Lumina, the upcoming "unified" GUI project for FreeBSD? Does it integrate already with automounter or autofs? Just to add a short note about automounting in general: While this is a useful feature for most _personal_ desktop computer usage, there might be situations where it can cause immense trouble, like people stealing data, or putting (incriminating) data on your system. It's also dangerous when you attach a device that you want to perform forensic analysis or data recovery on - one stupid write, and you're out of luck. That's why I'd like to see a more differentiated approach in _any_ of the desktop environments supporting mounts: a) signal the appearing of a new device to the user, who can then select to mount it or just to leave it as is; or b) automatically mount a new device and show an icon shortcut to the mountpoint. The user should be able to select which policy to apply. For optical media, _blank_ optical media, it gets even more funny, let alone music CDs... :-) -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...