>> > I can't be of much more help to you, I don't use Gnome at all (see above)
>>
>> Can't say I blame you. What's the choice, though? I appreciate the
>> spare uncluttered desktop of Gnome. Last time I tried KDE (about 7 years
>> ago) it was anything but uncluttered. I tried XFCE briefly, but couldn't
>> get it to run stably. Besides, it was missing an application to switch
>> between keyboard layouts, something I absolutely need.
>
> I hear good things about XFCE these days. If you haven't tried it lately, it
> might be worth a new look. And you can always write a small script to change
> your keyboard layout if there's no gui app. Not as convenient as a systray
> icon, but probably a small price to pay if everything else suits your needs
>
My basic response was in fact that I now use XFCE, and I basically do
not have any auto-mounting software even installed. I don't mind
mounting and umounting manually for some stuff, and then using udev
rules and scripts for like my regular USB items (harddisks, flash
memory...).
So yeah, you go mount the CD yourself, but then the eject button will
work if you just set up a script in the very worst case, as long as
all permissions are satisfied (group, whatever). Usually an eject
call on the device will work fine for the hotkey. Just use some
keyboard tweaking program to fix it up. And for me that's just fine.
Other people may prefer it differently. But auto-mounting will do
annoying stuff on my laptop every time it goes to sleep and wakes up
and...it's just annoying to me personally.
If you don't have much experience setting up you own custom
'automonting' tools, I'll give just a couple examples. I think with
the comments it's clear enough.
daid@titan ~ % cat /etc/udev/rules.d/10-local.rules
# external USB, Seagate FreeAgent GO aka cyclops
SUBSYSTEMS=="usb", DRIVERS=="usb", ATTRS{serial}=="
5LZ2XQJ5", SYMLINK+="cyclops" ACTION=="add",
RUN+="/etc/udev/scripts/mount_cyclops.sh"
daid@titan ~ % more /etc/udev/scripts/mount_cyclops.sh
#!/bin/bash
#mount Seagate FreeAgent Go with serial 5LZ2XQJ5 to /mnt/cyclops on ACTION='add'
mount -t ext3 /dev/cyclops /mnt/cyclops
chown root:users /mnt/cyclops
chmod 775 /mnt/cyclops
daid@titan ~ % ls -l /etc/udev/scripts/mount_cyclops.sh
-rwxr--r-- 1 root root 186 Apr 27 04:21 /etc/udev/scripts/mount_cyclops.sh
daid@titan ~ % ls -l /etc/udev/rules.d/10-local.rules
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1409 May 25 13:43 /etc/udev/rules.d/10-local.rules
The udev rule will do a tricky thing making the /dev/cyclops symlink
so it doesn't matter what *order* the device was connected. Rather
than 'naming' it like in some other operating systems, you just give
it a static mount point. When you're done, just manually umount the
mount point.
Cheers,
daid
