Kip Warner posted on Thu, 01 Aug 2013 11:02:46 -0700 as excerpted: > On Wed, 2013-07-31 at 20:12 +0530, dE wrote: >> On 07/30/13 06:42, Kip Warner wrote: >> > Hey list, >> > >> > I looked through KDE 4.10's System Settings configuration areas and I >> > could not seem to locate the location to enable / disable autostart >> > for removable media, as per XDG Autostart[1]. I found settings for >> > other user actions on removable media, but not for autostart. Perhaps >> > it is not implemented under KDE? Any help appreciated. >> > >> > Respectfully, >> >> This feature should be removed if it exists. Everyone know how secure >> Windows is. > > Most major desktop environments support this, such as Gnome 3, Gnome 2, > Unity, Xfce, etc. It doesn't mean what is on the mounted media is > automatically executed. It just means the user will be prompted if > they'd like to run it automatically when mounted. There is nothing wrong > with that.
I believe the plumbing is there, but an auto-run action may not be configured by default. FWIW I (being a gentooer with the choice available in the form of USE flags that set the appropriate pre-build configure script options) have most or all of that functionality (including automount itself) turned off, thereby eliminating a bunch of dependencies I'd prefer not to have installed in the first place. Thus, I can't very easily verify my memory of existing behavior and the corresponding run-time options. But that said, here's what I remember from when I had it available: When media detection and actions are setup, inserting a removable media (be it a USB stick/drive, a CD/DVD, or whatever) triggers media detection via udev and udisks (I have udev installed and the USE flag on but not udisks, as when I investigated it's a small scripts package by itself, but pulls in all sorts of other deps including parted, polkit, consolekit, spidermonkey... and some less controversial packages too, all of which I'd prefer to live without in terms of sysadmin level complications I otherwise don't want or need). That detection triggers a notification with various actions available. The actions are configurable based on the type of device, etc, and by default include things like playing a DVD in a media player (using standard freedesktop.org associations), mounting the filesystem and opening it in dolphin, etc. Using that infrastructure, I believe it would be reasonably easy to setup an autoplay action, almost certainly reasonably easy for a competent system administrator[1] familiar with his[2] hardware and the distro he's working on. But at least back a couple kde4 feature-versions ago when I last had that stuff installed here, either there was not such an action by default, or more likely, if there is/was, I never used it with media that would trigger that particular action displayed as available. If that action isn't there by default, it may be that the freedesktop.org spec for it came along after kde4 was already available and it was judged a feature that should wait for a major version bump, kde5/frameworks. Alternatively, it may be that it was judged a bit too risky, even with a prompt. Meanwhile, given that I don't have that feature even installed now it's difficult for me to check what the kcontrol module for configuring the media detection actions was named, but I distinctly remember such a module showing up in kde settings. I checked into it at the time, and it's definitely possible to setup new or reconfigure existing actions based on various criteria such as whether the inserted media is an optical device, whether it has a detected filesystem on it or is simply a CD, etc. That's where I'd suggest looking, as that's the mechanism kde uses for it. But I don't remember the name... --- [1] System administrator: As used here, that's the person or persons that are responsible for choosing what OS/distro is installed along with optional packages, and for configuring them as necessary. Every computer has at least one sysadmin, whether they choose to call themselves that or not, tho in the case of something like Google's chrome machines or some not-jailbroken smartphones/tabs, that responsibility is shared or even nearly entirely borne by the service provider, making the user much more a simple user without admin privs or responsibilities. [2] His/he: In context this is gender-generic, using the long established but now no longer "politically correct" in some circles convention of referring to a person of unknown gender as "he", while referring to a personified object such as a ship or a car or a hurricane as "she". -- Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman ___________________________________________________ This message is from the kde mailing list. Account management: https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde. Archives: http://lists.kde.org/. More info: http://www.kde.org/faq.html.