Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

[2byte]

This project has been discontinued

As part of the effort to make Puppy more friendly to linux newbs I'm working on a tray program that will detect USB devices as they are plugged in and will offer the user a dialog to take the appropriate action. As a first step, only devices that are listed as "/dev/sd*" are being detected. These would mostly be pendrives.

I sincerely hope that the good people on this forum will take a few minutes to test the program and provide feedback. Also I do not own every type of USB device there is, so I am asking that anyone with a USB device that should be supported to run the commands 'fdisk -l', first without the device inserted, and then after the device is inserted. Then post or PM the device description. Once you have the device description please run the command disktype on the device. For example if the device is /dev/sda1 then run 'disktype /dev/sda1'. Please include the results in your post or PM. Also please include a real world description of the device, ie brand X mp3 player, etc.

To get things started here is a link to the first version and a description of what it does at this point in time. For lack of a better name I'm calling it usbmount for now.

usbmount is a semi-automated drive mounter for USB drives. This version recognizes devices tagged as /dev/sd*. It is designed to run in the background, so it's best to start it up a couple of seconds after the window manager is running.

It runs invisibly until a USB drive is plugged in, then as soon as the system recognizes the drive usbmount will pop up a dialog offering to mount the drive.

An icon will appear in the tray whenever a USB drive is present. The tray icon is compatible with JWM and IceWm (icewmtray must be running), and should work with any window manager that is compatible with eggtrayicon.

Hover the mouse pointer over the tray icon and a list of mounted drives will be displayed.

Clicking the tray icon will bring up a dialog listing all of your USB drives and these may be mounted or unmounted from the dialog.

Attempting to unmount a drive that is in use will be refused and a dialog will be presented with an appropriate message.

Unplugging a mounted drive will bring up a warning dialog with advice, and the drive will be automatically unmounted to forestall system errors.

Pmount, Mut, and commandline mounting of drives do not interfere with usbmount. It recognizes outside changes to drive status and adjusts itself accordingly.

The tray icon has a 2 pixel border that can be colored with a command line argument.
usbmont -b "red"
usbmount -b "#FF0000"

Compiled on Puppy 2.14 with GTK 2.8.17 and gcc.


Thank you for your time,
Vern

[cb88]

pdrive already does the auto mount maybe you could look at it and maybe add your ideas to it since it is already really good

the interface is like a cross between grafburn and p-mount(on which it is based) also it has progress bars and does not need to refresh the window like p-mount has to do each time...

here is the link to the tread it is in : http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=21200

also you may want to test it out in 3.00 since pdrive was broken in 3.00 due to the gtk upgrade to 2.10.x i guess and many other Upgrades pdrive .11 is fixed already in 3.00

[2byte]

Ecomoney defined the goals for Talking Stick.

[cb88]

I think you miss understood me I do think you have a good idea!!

I just think that it should be integrated with pdrive so the first time you plug in a usb drive a window pops up asking if you want to automount all the time or never automount that would only mean a small modification to pdrive so that it shows that option instead of automounting the first time a usb drive is pluged in.

also might be a good idea to never mount the u3 part of a flash drive(if it has one) because it is not used in linux....

I have only mounted a u3 drive once and it had a name like /mnt/sr0 for the u3 part I think i'll see if i can get a hold of it again later

If it doesn't conflict with pdrive's auto mount the that is good but I don't see how it won't can't test it now cause i'm not at home...

also it appears that usbmount is already twice the size of pdrive why?

[zigbert]

Here are the base code of the Pdrive deamon. It all became so tiny, that I felt it was a puppy.

If we only could detect cdroms without using huge cpu resources.......

[cb88]

this is a little bit of a long shot (and i'm not sure my terminology is right ) but could the the cd detecting code be searated out and give a very low nice value that way it has a very low priority... since it probably spends a lot of time just waiting for the drive to respond..

[ecomoney]

Hi, just to remind you, those wernt just the goals for TS 3.03ce, they are the goals concieved by BarryK in the Puppy Linux Mission Statement.

{rant}
Pmount doesnt work. I can make this bold statement because Ive tested it on "linux newbs" and they didnt have a clue how to use it. It doesnt explain what it does, or have labels and assumes people know the theory of device mounting linux. It is possible even more unfriendly than MUT. Newbies dont know what "mounting" is because they've never had to do it with windows. I have to give them a 10 minute tutorial just so they can read their pendrives, cd's and cameras that used to "just work" and they see it as a disadvantage and an inconvenience.
{/rant}

I was very happy indeed that 2byte dropped me a pm with details of this project. Puppy could be made to be 100 times more successful at achieving its stated and noble aims with very little coding effort. Ive seen this by using it "in the field". With the 2.15ce release and the feature of not presenting the user with a black screen full of writing they didint understand everytime there was a powercut cut down my call-outs/support calls by about half. This should cut them down by half again. It is already a feature in most other distros that dont even have "linux-newbie-friendly" in their aims.

Sorry its late, and Im grumpy, and I cant find my pendrive (Why do they make those things so small!)

[cb88]

pen drives are small because they (the manufacturers) want you to loose them and have to buy new ones cause they take too long to wear out....

I tried out usbmount and it worked (in 3.00) with my pendrive (1gb simpletech) and the taskbar icon is a nice touch it also provides a very familiar usb drive interface...

I still think it should be integrated with pdrive....

[Pizzasgood]

[JB4x4]

2byte - Thank you for your time with this project. I too spend a lot of time explaining mount / unmount. I tried out your program, here's what I got. Mounted an external usb hard drive, worked, sda1. Mounted a flash key, worked, sdb2. Tried to unmount external hd, usbmount died, and I got the following error...

USER PID ACCESS COMMAND
/dev/sda1: root F.... ntfs-3g

Segmentation fault

Both drives were left mounted. I forgot to mention above that the external has an ntfs formated hd in it. On the plus side just using the usb key worked fine.

P.S. My Nikon 3200 camera also worked (justed tested by itself)

[Pizzasgood]

I get a segmentation fault as soon as I try running it, in both Puppy 2.14 and 3.00.

One thing I've been wondering since I read about this though: You detect the drives based on sd*. But USB drives aren't the only things that use that designation. My internal SATA harddrive uses it too. Could that be what's causing the error?

[Lobster]

[2byte]

JB4x4 and Pizzasgood, thanks for the feedback. Very helpful reports. This is exactly what I need to establish a baseline for the device detection methods (not to mention my program logic). Even the segmentation fault reports are helpful.

JB4x4, was anything accessing your external usb hard drive at the time of the fault, like Rox or anything? I ask because the output you reported is from the command 'fuser -v -m /dev/sda1' and it should have triggered a 'device is busy' dialog.

Pizzasgood, was there any console output before it died on you? Would you run the command fdisk -l and tell me what that output is please?

Again, thanks for the feedback. This project will never get off the ground without this kind of help.

Vern

[Pizzasgood]

Nothing that means anything, just a complaint about the locale:

[cb88]

that is with my flash drive (currently sde1 it changes) and an sd card pluged in (currently sdc1)

the sd card takes longer to mount and is only detected if I run pdrive or i refresh prive (or mut or pmount)