fstab-sync Issue - I Think

[C. Beamer]

Hello,

You'll have to pardon this message, but I don't have the time or 
patience to wade through the archives on this list and there is not 
search mechanism with which I can search for a specific term.

I'm a little frustrated at the moment and despite trying other lists and 
trying to search on the internet, I can't seem to find a solution to 
this problem.

At one time, if you wanted to allow a non-root user to mount a device, 
you edited the fstab file.  Now you can't do that directly - if you look 
at the fstab file (which I'm sure that everyone on this list already 
knows), you are told that it is edited by fstab-sync.

The situation is this:

A couple of weeks ago, I installed Fedora Core 3.  This is my home 
computer.  When everything was up and running, I tried to mount my zip 
drive under my normal user id using 'Disk Management' from the menu, 
only to be told that there were no file systems that I was permitted to 
mount.  "No problem", I thought.  I just went in and proceeded to edit 
the fstab file.

Well, the first surprise that I got was that devices are now stored in 
/usr/media.  However, this was not a problem.  Despite the comment at 
the beginning of the file that the fstab file was edited by fstab-sync, 
I went ahead and edited my fstab file anyway.  This worked, but of 
course, on reboot, the fstab file was reloaded and I was back to square one.

So, I read the man page for fstab-sync, which wasn't very helpful other 
than being told that to add a new entry, I was supposed to use 
'fstab-sync - - add [UDI], but I couldn't figure out the exact syntax I 
was supposed to use to supply the UDI.

Then, tonight  I found an article on the web from Red Hat magazine.  It 
explained why the terms 'pamconsole' and 'managed' were used in the 
fstab file.  From this, as far as I can see from my fstab file, I should 
be able to mount my peripheral devices as a normal user.

My fstab file:
# This file is edited by fstab-sync - see 'man fstab-sync' for details
/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 /                       ext3    defaults        1 1
LABEL=/boot             /boot                   ext3    defaults        1 2
none                    /dev/pts                devpts  gid=5,mode=620  0 0
none                    /dev/shm                tmpfs   defaults        0 0
none                    /proc                   proc    defaults        0 0
none                    /sys                    sysfs   defaults        0 0
/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol01 swap                    swap    defaults        0 0
/dev/sda4               /media/ZIP750           vfat    
pamconsole,exec,noauto,iocharset=utf8,noatime,sync,fscontext=system_u:object_r:removable_t,managed 
0 0
/dev/hdc                /media/cdrecorder       auto    
pamconsole,exec,noauto,fscontext=system_u:object_r:removable_t,managed 0 0
/dev/fd0                /media/floppy           auto    
pamconsole,exec,noauto,fscontext=system_u:object_r:removable_t,managed 0 0

First, since the entries for my peripherals contain 'pamconsole' and 
'managed', I don't understand why I can't mount them as a normal user.

Second, I would like to know the proper syntax used to edit the fstab 
file using fstab-sync

Third, if my problem is not related to HAL, then I would be open to 
suggestions as what my problem IS related to.

I apologize for the length of this message and I thank all for reading.  
I am not a techy, but I have become proficient enough in installing 
Linux (I've used Linux from Redhat 5.2), I can navigate the file system, 
I can use vi, I have installed software via cvs and tarball, I have 
edited the yum.conf file to add repositories.  I am not stupid, but I 
need help with this issue.

Regards,

Colleen






_______________________________________________
hal mailing list
hal at lists.freedesktop.org
http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/hal