Date: Wed, 15 Apr 2009 19:48:47 +0200 From: Polytropon <freebsd@edvax.de> To: utisoft@gmail.com Cc: Odhiambo Washington <odhiambo@gmail.com>, FreeBSD Mailing List <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>, Chris Rees <utisoft@googlemail.com> Subject: Re: Automounting of USB drives - Why is it a problem? Message-ID: <20090415194847.2337d439.freebsd@edvax.de> In-Reply-To: <b79ecaef0904150544r65806aa7j6eb167128fbe2e0c@mail.gmail.com> References: <991123400904150450p56d24ba5vcd15de8c34096ab0@mail.gmail.com> <b79ecaef0904150544r65806aa7j6eb167128fbe2e0c@mail.gmail.com>
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On Wed, 15 Apr 2009 13:44:40 +0100, Chris Rees <utisoft@googlemail.com> wrote: > Automounting > is a fiddly thing, and is not necessary for the majority of > applications; remember FreeBSD is primarily a server OS. Well, I'm using it exclusively as a desktop since 4.0, what am I doing wrong? :-) No, honestly: There are additional security considerations. Do you want anyone to plug in an USB stick and steal your data while you're not at your computer? Or put crap onto your machine? In some settings, especially the "desktop-class installations at home", automounting of USB sticks and other media is a very good thing. It makes life easier. Desktops in a corporate environment may require this functionality explicitely to be disabled - theft of data can be made more complicated by such a means. In most cases, there are guidelines by the corporation that determine which features are allowed and which aren't. In development settings, it may be interrupting. Sometimes, I just want to put in a blank CD to use it later on - not now, so I don't want any interaction now. Or a USB stick that I want to newfs, I don't want to get it mounted with its crappy MSDOS file system on it before (which would require more interaction to unmount it). In server settings, automounting is mostly completely useless because there is nothing to mount. What would be the next request in this line? "I want to put in a USB stick and then FreeBSD should automatically execute what's on this stick, and it should do this by default without any questions." :-) And yes, I'm paranoid and old-fashioned. =^_^= -- Polytropon >From Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...
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