Thoughts about HAL, Ivman and Pmount.

[Artem Kachitchkine]

>>A device must belong to somebody. It should probably belong to root by
>>default. Root can take permanent ownership of the device and mount it
>>so it's accessible to all. There's nothing preventing you from running
>>root's instance of a volume manager outside any root session.
> 
> I know, that's what I do. But some say it's bad, becouse maybe the
> device shouldn't be accessible to all, or unmountable by all.
> Personally, I'm not sure what's the right thing. I lend towards no

The device doesn't have to be accessible to all. Root can set the mount 
options as he wishes: per system, per device, per user, etc.

I look at it this way: automounter (volume manager) is just a mechanism 
to save users some typing. It's not designed to assign devices or hand 
out extra privileges.

 > automounting at all, just create mountpoints. first user who mounts
 > something will own it and only he can unmount it.

I think you should focus on device ownership, not mount point ownership. 
A device can belong only to one user. That user is free to mount it 
anywhere and with any permissions. If Alice wants to share her CD writer 
with Bob, she simply sets mount point permissions accordingly.

-Artem.