[Novalug] Device naming.

[Peter Larsen]

On Tue, 2010-03-16 at 23:27 -0400, Gopher wrote:

> /etc/fstab:
> 
> Are you saying that that if I want a modern Linux box to automatically 
> mount drives (partitions, gizmos, buckets, what have you) I do *NOT* use 
> /etc/fstab, at all?  And I'm going to ask you to answer this question in 
> the context of a root drive/partition/thing.  Because as far as I know 
> (right now), I have to have some entry in /etc/fstab which specifies 
> that my root file system should be mounted on device/partition/UUID/etc 
> 'XXXX' when the box boots, otherwise it doesn't get mounted and things 
> come to a screeching halt.

All static mount-points should be in /etc/fstab. So defining
your /, /home, /tmp, /var etc. are all still placed there. As bryan
points out, that means the automated services IGNORES them. Which is
what we want.

> *OR*
> 
> Is it that I should use /etc/fstab for ONLY static things (like my root 
> partition/filesystem) and *NOT* for thing like removable USB devices.  
> (This is the one that I'm hoping you'll say is correct, because 
> otherwise I think my head will explode.)

Correct - no CD-ROM, USB, memory-card, camera etc. devices goes
into /etc/fstab. They're dynamic/fluent in nature, so you need to let
the dynamic device managers handle them. To control specific parameters
on these devices, you customize udev rules.

> Now, on to NetworkManager...
> 
> What is it? 

See my other reply. It's KNetworkManager for Gnome :)

> And a few thoughts on why I feel I've had no idea what the hell you 
> people have been talking about this week.

I feel like that once or twice a week reading here. I mean BIO DIESEL -
I learned a lot from that thread that I never knew about.

> I've been seeing statements this week such as, 'just pop in a cd-rom and 
> it will appear on your desktop'.  I see that happen on my X/KDE 
> workstation, but I don't see anything like that happening on my other 
> Linux servers (I've always thought this was a function of KDE or Gnome, 
> not udev, etc.).

There are ways to do that without X/Gnome/KDE running. When you stop
Gnome you stop the daemons that listen to the dbus for automatic
mounting. A few years ago I used "autofs" which with little setup will
automount CDs, NFS etc. - I've not tried it with USB, but it should be
able to handle that. Be aware, that it doesn't use the hal/udev
messages. 

>   If I'm setting up a VM guest under VMWare and I want 
> to load vmtools, once I toggle ESX to give the tools 'cd' to the guest, 
> I have to mount /dev/cdrom by hand - every time; there's not 
> automounting involved here. (oh, and there is no desktop, there's no X!).

VMware ESX is a "bastard" setup of a Redhat server. It lacks most useful
features. You can't even run esxtop without being root (*sigh*). You
still have to manually mount stuff - unless you go the "vmware way" and
create vmfs storage points, that are mounted automatically (go figure). 

> ...so where I'm going here is that I know a lot of SAs like me, and I've 
> yet to find anybody who doesn't add their static IP to 
> /etc/network/interfaces directly or who doesn't add their root partition 
> to /etc/fstab.   So I'm starting to think that all of this 'automagical' 
> mounting stuff and nifty management tools are really for the benefit of 
> those Linux users who run their workstations with full X Servers + 
> Gnome/KDE/XCFE/etc. and that us guys who prefer to live on the command 
> line and who really aren't 'end users' (those who are constantly 
> adding/removing external hard drives and USB thingies) aren't 
> necessarily the target audience of the discussion.  Thoughts?

I find that for workstation use, we all prefer the GUI way. Word
processing, browsing etc. are all standard graphical applications on a
workstation. Even email has turned GUI so you can view attachments like
PDF. gvfs is a response to that development. It makes managing your
workstation setup easier. Of course a security layer allows you the
admin to control what the user can customize or not - no news there.

-- 
Best Regards
  Peter Larsen

Wise words of the day:
This is a scsi driver, scraes the shit out of me, therefore I tapdanced
and wrote a unix clone around it (C) by linus
	-- Somewhere in the kernel tree
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