For months, almost years, I'm searching for a decent way to automagically handle network mounts - and NetWorkManager could finally be what I'm searching for!
My problem: All my files are on my big desktop computer harddisk, and I'm mostly working with my laptop, and I have the desktop harddisk mounted on the laptop. The laptop has either a wired connection, sometimes when I'm on the terrace I have a wireless network - and sometimes none at all. The laptop goes totally crazy when it tries to mount the remote directory and I have no network, or when the remote dir is mounted and the connection suddenly drops. I'd suggest that NetworkManager (optionally) handles such network mounts in /etc/fstab, and I'd propose the following way: Put all network mounts in /etc/fstab with the noauto option, so the they don't get mounted by any init scripts. If there's no network connection, then networkmanager obviously does nothing. But if there is a network connection, then networkmanager should mount a network directory as soon as it is accessed (e.g. when I "cd" into it), and unmount it instantly when I stop using it (e.g. when I do "cd .."). This way, networkmanager would make sure that network mounts are only mounted when they're really used, thus minimizing the chance that a remote directory remains mounted when the network connection drops for some reason. It's also important that networkmanager does not go crazy if I have a network connection, but if the remote computer is e.g. turned off and thus the network mount is not available. Perhaps networkmanager could just interoperate with something like submount, or handle it completely on it's own. There could be some really simple config options that show all remote mounts in /etc/fstab and you can choose which one networkmanager should take care off. Any comments welcome! Sincerely, Tom _______________________________________________ NetworkManager-list mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/networkmanager-list
