MountAllLocalFilesystems

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Summary

List all the local partitions to the nautilus "Computer" place and make possible for an user to mount them.

Rationale

At the moment there is no GUI method of mounting non-removable hard disk partitions.

Use cases

  • Michael has a multi-boot system with Windows and Ubuntu installed. He's using Ubuntu at the moment but needs a document stored on his Windows partition.

Scope

The changes apply to the Ubuntu desktop. When the GnomeMount specification is implemented, so that gnome-mount is available for Xubuntu, this will automatically apply to the XFCE desktop as well.

Design

  • Show mountable hard disk partitions in the computer:// place.
  • If the user attempts to mount a nonremovable volume, mount it through gksudo.

Implementation

  • Change hal to stop setting the volume.ignore property for the local partitions with a sensible file system.
  • Make hal set volume.ignore for the fstab "auto" partitions (this cannot be done with a simple FDI rule, but requires a code patch).
  • Make gnome-mount call itself through gksu when hal does not allow the current user to mount the specified volume.

Possible future improvements

Having a way for the user to ignore and mask some partitions would be nice. That would require to modify gnome-vfs and nautilus to add the corresponding options and to store those settings to gconf. Most of users probably don't need that feature though, it's not a part of the specification then.

Comments

Lots of windows talk here. Which filesystem types does this apply to? Does it work with random OS X, Mac OS 9, Linux, BSD filesystems? -- Engla

Pitti: Yes, this of course applies to any file system Linux can handle.

Hi, in Kubuntu this patch makes fstab mounted partitions inaccessable through media:/ and taking them from fstab does not help either as it does not launch a dialogue to mount them --FFIXXX

Tests

  • Find or create a hard disk partition that is not mentioned in /etc/fstab, make sure it has a sensible file system. If you just created it, you need to reboot the computer.

  • The partition should appear in the usual places for media (desktop icon, Computer place, diskmounter applet.

  • If you mount the partition using one of these icons, gksu should ask you for your password and mount it to /media/label.

CategorySpec

MountAllLocalFilesystems (last edited 2008-08-06 16:31:05 by localhost)