[Techtalk] Auto-mounting (WAS [Grrltalk] Misinformation in the IT workplace)

[showercurtain]

[Moving this to techtalk. I've included the original sub-thread below
for clarity]

Thanks for following up on my question about auto-mounting floppies.
I thought that floppy drives aren't auto-mounted by default because
of security reasons and file permission-type stuff. Now I use RedHat
8 and I'm wondering why that doesn't apply to the cdrom,ie: if I want
to open a file on a floppy disk I have to mount the floppy, but I
don't need to do that with the cd-rom.

Berenice  



> From: Meredydd <meredydd at everybuddy.com>
> To: grrltalk at linuxchix.org
 
> On Saturday 21 February 2004 15:04, Jenn Vesperman wrote:
> > >  So I asked another person and
> > > they said auto-mounting causes gradual physical damage to the
> > > floppy disk because the hard drive is constantly scanning it to
> > > check if it's in use.
> >
> > That's possible, actually. Though the hard drive won't be
> scanning
> > it! The auto-mounter would be triggering the floppy drive
> mechanism
> > to scan it.
> Hmm. Depends how it works. Well-implemented, that isn't necessary.
> 
> > But if that was the case, wouldn't it damage floppies on Macs or
> > Windows systems as well?
> Windows systems don't touch the floppy drive until a program
> actually tries to access it. The only time it repeatedly scans the 
> floppy drive is if (under win2k or later) you select a floppy drive
> with nothing in it, at which point it asks you to insert a disk,
and > keeps scanning the drive until you insert one (you can tell
this 
> because the light goes on and it starts making that unmistakeable 
> sound). Ditto macs.
> 
> By the way, although the technical point is probably irrelevant by
> now, it may intrigue you to know that *both* people were in fact 
> talking through their respective hats. A friend of mine uses autofs
> (an alternative automount system), and I *thought* that it worked 
> for floppies. Sure enough, googling for "autofs floppy" turned up a
> bunch  of stuff, including a guide which I think you'd find
helpful, > if you still want to do it:
> 
> http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue42/nielsen.html
> 
> 
> Meredydd
> ------------------------------
> 
> Date: Sat, 21 Feb 2004 11:19:52 -0800
> From: PCasper <sylph at cyber-dyne.com>

> 
> Jenn Vesperman wrote:
> 
> >> So I asked another person and
> >>they said auto-mounting causes gradual physical damage to the
> floppy
> >>disk because the hard drive is constantly scanning it to check if
> >>it's in use.

> >
> >That's possible, actually. Though the hard drive won't be scanning
> it!
> >The auto-mounter would be triggering the floppy drive mechanism to
> scan it. But if that was the case, wouldn't it damage floppies on 
> Macs or Windows systems as well?
> >
> >I'm not sure which group determines filesystem issues, though I
> >suspect it'd be at least mentioned in passing on the linux-kernel 
> >mailing list. Maybe someone here can let you know which mailing 
> >list's archives to check.
> >  
> >
> Actually, the answer I"ve seen for that (I wasn't involved, so I
> can't speak for the veracity of the answer) is that auto-mount 
> requires a certain amount of overhead in processor time and memory
> in order to be constantly checking the drives for new media, and 
> rather than eat up the overhead, the decision was made in most 
> distros to leave automount out. (I have also seen some, like my 
> initial Mandrake install running KDE which did automount)
> 
> 
> >Also, go to a library and ask the librarians for books about
> >office politics and how to survive it. :)
> >
> They HAVE books like that? Oh good heavens.... *races to the
> library yesterday to look for some*
> 
> >
> >Jenn V.
> >  
> 
> --Poppy
> ------------------------------
> 
> Date: Sat, 21 Feb 2004 11:21:23 -0800
> From: Akkana Peck <akkana at shallowsky.com>

> Jenn Vesperman writes:
> > On Sat, 2004-02-21 at 23:04, showercurtain wrote:
> > >  So I asked another person and
> > > they said auto-mounting causes gradual physical damage to the
> floppy
> > > disk because the hard drive is constantly scanning it to check
> if
> > > it's in use.
> > 
> > That's possible, actually. Though the hard drive won't be
> > scanning it!
> > The auto-mounter would be triggering the floppy drive mechanism
> > to scan it.
> > But if that was the case, wouldn't it damage floppies on Macs or
> > Windows systems as well?
> 
> Jenn's comment triggered a memory.  In the past when I ran a gnome
> desktop (I usually run something lightweight, like icewm or xfce)
> and I do a dmesg to check on something hardware or kernel related,
I
> noticed that it was filled with what looks like IDE error messages 
> related to the CDROM drive.  Not only that, but if I watched it, I 
> discovered that I'm getting a new error message line (they're all 
> identical) several times a minute.
> 
> It turned out after some googling and poking around that there is a
> gnome daemon which polls the CD drive to ask, "Did someone insert a
> CD since the last time I checked?" and if the answer is yes, then
> it tries to mount or play the CD.
> 
> Automount is a good default for desktops, but doing things that
> fill up the kernel logs with error messages makes it hard to look 
> for real errors there.  So I poked around in the gnome preferences 
> and found the automount prefs and turned them off.
> 
> This may be what your coworker was thinking of -- perhaps it does
> the same thing for floppy drives, polling them to see if a floppy 
> has been inserted (though I never saw dmesg lines for the floppy 
> drive). I wouldn't think it would do any harm to the hardware, and 
> it wouldn't surprise me if Windows does the exact same thing.
> 
> Nothing to add to the other advice about office politics and
> dealing
> with difficult coworkers, except that it all sounds like good
> advice ...
> hang in there, it sounds like your immediate manager is reasonable,
> and that can be a lifesaver when you have difficult colleagues.
> 
> 	...Akkana
> ------------------------------
> 




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