On Sunday 29 October 2006 18:51, Tim Cutts wrote: > On 28 Oct 2006, at 10:59 pm, Ulrich Eckhardt wrote: > > Package: am-utils > > Version: 6.1.5-2 > > Severity: wishlist > > > > Greetings! > > > > I'm currently looking for something that mounts CDs automatically > > and came > > across the am-utils package. I believe it can mount CDs or > > floppies, but I'm > > not sure. > > It can, yes. You can use it to automount pretty much any kind of > filesystem, although I personally have never used it for mounting > local devices. I've certainly made sure I build the Debian package > with support for physical devices. > > > That is also my criticism: In the package description, it should > > mention that it both manages network filesystems and local > > filesystems like CDs and floppies, unless it can't, which I'm > > still not sure about. Further, the fact that I still can't say > > if it really does that is somehow striking, how can it be that > > this is hidden so deeply in the documentation? > > I think it's probably just a by-product of what 99.9% of people use > it for.
Hmmm, that's what I also my impression was. > > Now, assuming it can mount CDs, I'd also expect that to be > > a primary use for it and it should be documented as one > > typical example (e.g. in section 11 of the included HTML > > docs or as an example setup script). > > We've tried using it mount USB drives at work, and actually it > doesn't do a very good job of it. It works fine automounting local > filesystems which you expect to remain mounted forever once you've > mounted them (so I'd have no problems with using amd to automount > local fixed disks) but when we tried using it for USB drives we came > across a snag, and that is the automatic unmounting. For local > removable media, you want the unmounting to happen quite quickly > after you stop using the device, but typically with NFS filesystems > you want them to hang around for a while (especially in large > installations). Unfortunately, there's no way to specify separate > unmount intervals for different mount types, so it just didn't work > for us, and I suspect this problem would also bite other users. I see... > > In the case it can't mount CDs, I'd at least mention that it is > > designed to > > mount network filesystems and perhaps even suggest a different tool > > for > > CD/floppies. > > Such as the stuff that Gnome and KDE come with? Nope, it should also work without a desktop environment. After some looking, I now settled for autofs at the moment. Its setup is pretty easy, you only need to activate two lines in already existing configfiles and it automatically mounts your CDs and unmounts them after 60s of inactivity (which I also reduced to 5s). I think this is closer to what most people want, and I would perhaps mention it in the package description as alternative when a) you are running Linux (I think autofs is Linux-only) and b) you only want some removable media automounted. cheers Uli -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
