removable attribute for disks

[Martin Pitt]

Hello Peter,

Peter F. Patel-Schneider [2009-05-13  9:10 -0400]:
> I have noticed that some "disks" are tagged as "removable" and some are
> not.  I have two USB-connected "disks", one a USB flash drive and the
> other a real disk inside a USB to SATA enclosure.  The first is marked
> as removable but the second is not.  What then is the "removable"
> attribute supposed to mean?

I wonder why it's marked this way around. There are usually two
classes:

"removable" means that the drive itself is fixed, but you can change
the medium. This usually applies to CD-ROM drives, SD card readers,
etc.

"hotpluggable" means that you can remove the entire drive.

Thus a typical CD-ROM drive is "removable" only, an USB stick is
"hotpluggable" only, and an USB card reader with an SD card is both.

> It appears that the removable mark comes from sysfs.  Is this the case?

Yes, the kernel drivers detect this.

> Is there an opportunity to insert a (udev or hal) rule that can
> adjust the determination of this attribute

No, that's not possible.

> in a way that affects other desktop software (notably Nautilus,
> under Fedora 11)?

This should be done with access policies, i. e. configure PolicyKit
so that you allow/disallow access to removable/fixed drives.

Martin
-- 
Martin Pitt                        | http://www.piware.de
Ubuntu Developer (www.ubuntu.com)  | Debian Developer  (www.debian.org)