Browse removable media when inserted
Removable drives and removable media will be displayed in a Nautilus window when they are mounted, regardless of whether they are mounted automatically (depending on the settings of the checkboxes) or manually.
Auto-run programs on new drives and media
Searches for a file named autorun on newly mounted media, prompts the user for confirmation, and then executes that file. The file may be a script or a compiled program.
The auto-run feature does not work with automatically mounted media because GNOME takes the precaution of mounting media with the noexec option, which prevents direct execution of files (including autorun files). It does work with manually mounted media.dcim gthumb-import
2.8.1.3. Configuring default actions in KDE
Figure 2-33. KDE Removable Media configuration
Select Unmounted Removable Medium in the "Medium types" menu. Two actions will be displayed: "Open in New Window," which mounts the drive and opens a Konqueror browse window, and Do Nothing, which causes a drive icon to be displayed on the desktop, which, when clicked, will mount and browse the drive.
To set one of these actions as the default, click on it, then click "Toggle as Auto Action," and then Apply. The selected action will take place automatically when new media is detected.
2.8.2. How Does It Work?
hal dbusUSB devices use a set of data items called descriptors to inform the controlling host of their capabilities. The Class descriptor is used to identify storage devices. These devices, which understand the same commands used to control SCSI disk drives, are given a device name in the form /dev/sd<x> where <x> is a sequential drive letter ( sd stands for SCSI disk ). Partitions within a USB storage device, if present, are given device names in the form /dev/sd<xp> where <p> is the partition number (1 is the first partition).
When a drive is mounted in a Fedora system, a record of the mount is made in /etc/mtab , which can be viewed with the mount command:
$ mount
/dev/mapper/main-root on / type ext3 (rw)
/dev/proc on /proc type proc (rw)
/dev/sys on /sys type sysfs (rw)
/dev/devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620)
/dev/md0 on /boot type ext3 (rw)
/dev/shm on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)
/dev/mapper/main-home on /home type ext3 (rw)
/dev/mapper/main-var on /var type ext3 (rw,acl)
/dev/sda on /media/spreadsheet type ext2 (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
/dev/sdb on /media/disk type vfat (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,shortname=winnt,uid=500)
This particular single USB storage device appears as two separate devices, highlighted in bold in this example: a disk drive, mounted using the filesystem label as the mount point ( /media/<fslabel> ), and a floppy disk (mounted as /media/disk in the output above).
This is a common configuration used on older USB keys; the emulated floppy disk device is intended to store encryption or password software for accessing the main storage device. Removable media is mounted under the /media directory.
A more useful way of looking at the /etc/mtab table is to use df :
# df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/main-root
30G 8.9G 20G 32% /
/dev/md0 251M 33M 205M 14% /boot
/dev/shm 506M 0 506M 0% /dev/shm
/dev/mapper/main-home
31G 5.9G 25G 20% /home
/dev/mapper/main-var 36G 26G 9.3G 74% /var
/dev/sda 120M 1.6M 112M 2% /media/spreadsheet
/dev/sdb 1.4M 70K 1.4M 5% /media/disk
This shows most of the information displayed by mount , but with a nice column layout showing the total size, amount of storage used, and the available space.
/proc/mounts contains the same information as /etc/mtab but is generated directly from the kernel's data structures (and is therefore more reliable).
The kernel uses memory as a buffer, writing data to disk periodically. Unmounting a disk flushes the buffer to disk immediately and updates the disk control structures to indicate that the drive is in a consistent (clean) state. If a drive is removed while mounted, some data (including parts of files) may not be written to the disk, resulting in data corruption.
2.8.3. What About...
2.8.3.1. ...partitioning a flash drive?
fdisk fdisk# fdisk/dev/sdb
Since fdisk is an interactive tool, it's necessary to enter single-letter commands to specify the changes that should be made to the partition table. First, print the partition table on the screen so you can review it:
Command (m for help): p
Disk /dev/sdb: 65 MB, 65536000 bytes
3 heads, 42 sectors/track, 1015 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 126 * 512 = 64512 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 1015 63924 83 Linux
This table shows a 64 MB device (64,512 bytes) with one partition.
If the display does not match the device you are trying to partition, you may be partitioning the wrong device; enter q to exit immediately!
Command (m for help): d
Selected partition 1
Create a new primary partition number 1 that is 30 MB in size:
Command (m for help): n
Command action