 | | | USB utilities | USB utilities 2005-03-23 - By Karl Latiss
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On Thu, 2005-03-24 at 14:49, Stephen Gardner wrote:
> On Wed, 23 Mar 2005, Akop Pogosian wrote:
>
> > I am often being asked is whether there exist utilities that allow
> > users to mount USB storage devices without superuser's intervention.
> > Does such thing exist on RHEL 3? What about RHEL 4?
>
> Akop,
> This is certainly very easy under RHEL4 which uses a combination
> of the hald process to detect the insertion of the USB storage device
> and fstab-sync to create the appropriate line in fstab to enable the
> device to be mounted by the user on console. RHEL4 has a /media directory
> into which user mountable CDROM, USB storage etc mount points are
> created.
>
> Under RHEL3 there are a couple of options I can think of. Firstly
> a crude option is to attempt to minic the RHEL4 /media directory
> with an entry in /etc/fstab something similar to
>
> /dev/sda /media/usbdevice auto user,noauto,unhide,sync 0 0
> [ change /dev/sda to suit your system, it's where my USB device ends up ]
>
> This doesn't always work as auto-detecting the filesystem can be
> problematic. The "user" option allows a user to mount and unmount the
> device. You can have problems with a user forgetting to unmount the device
> and simply removing the storage device. Changing that option to "users"
> will allow any user (not just the person who mounted it originally) to
> mount and unmount the device (NOTE: if you allow remote logins this can
> allow a remote user to unmount a local users filesystem). The "user"(s)
> option sets some sensible security defaults, see mount(8) man pages for
> more details.
>
> Secondly there's the automounter. A quick-and-dirty guide would be to have
> a line in /etc/auto.master like
> /media /etc/auto.media --timeout=120
>
> Then create a file called /etc/auto.media containing
> usbdevice -fstype=auto,nosuid,nodev,sync :/dev/sda
> [ change /dev/sda to suit your system, it's where my USB device ends up ]
>
> Then when a user goes into the /media/usbdevice it'll get mounted
> automatically. Plus after 2 minutes of inactivity the device will be
> unmounted. autofs(5) is worth reading.
>
> One note of warning about all of the above is that if you plan to perform
> an upgrade to RHEL4 from RHEL3 (rather than a clean install) and use some
> of the above suggestions they will cause conflicts with the internal RHEL4
> functions. If that's a possibility avoid using the /media and choose
> another location.
>
> Regards,
> Stephen
>
All the above may be possible but as long as the right entries are in
/etc/updfstab.conf.default (which was updated in U4 I think) it all
"works for me". I added /mnt/flash to the diskmounter applet and can
mount and unmount to my heart's content.
--
Karl Latiss <karl@(protected)>
designIT
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