fstab-sync Issue - I Think

[David Zeuthen]

On Sat, 2005-01-29 at 23:16 -0500, C. Beamer wrote:
> 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.
> 

Yeah - I think some people use things like site:lists.freedesktop.org
with Google though.

> 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.

This got fixed in an update IIRC - 'Disk Management' needed to be
taught about the new pamconsole user.

>   "No problem", I thought.  I just went in and proceeded to edit 
> the fstab file.
> 

Have you applied all the latest updates? There were some issues with
IDE zip drives that got fixed around hal version 0.4.3. USB Zip drives
works pretty much out of the box in the hal shipped with FC3. 

With the updates it should "just work" (assuming your zip media is
partitioned in the standard way, e.g. the data on partition 4 - this
will get fixed in hal 0.5.x although it will require minor surgery
to the gnome-vfs and konqueror hal patches)

SCSI Zip drives won't work unless you add a file with these contents

 <deviceinfo version="0.2">
   <device>
     <match key="storage.bus" string="scsi">
       <merge key="storage.policy.should_mount" type="bool">true</merge>
     </match>
   </device>
 </deviceinfo>

in /usr/share/hal/fdi/95userpolicy and make sure it ends in ".fdi".
This is intentional since, in FC3, we don't want to allow an
unprivileged
authorized console user to mount SCSI devices since SCSI devices is
not necessarily close the console (think iSCSI).

> Well, the first surprise that I got was that devices are now stored in 
> /usr/media.  

I think you mean /media. This is what FHS suggests; we're just trying
to be compliant in FC3 :-)

> 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.

Just remove the option 'managed' and fstab-sync won't delete your entry.

> 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.
> 

This should work from Nautilus or the command line.

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

See above.

> 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.
> 

If the above doesn't help, you should file a bug at (since you're
using FC3)

 http://bugzilla.redhat.com

since this list is mostly about development of HAL.

Thanks,
David


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