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  • From: James Miller <jamtat AT mailsnare.net>
  • To: baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [BL] USB devices
  • Date: Thu, 4 Jan 2007 15:02:26 -0600

On Thu, Jan 04, 2007 at 09:17:55PM +0000, Christof Lange wrote:
>
> Thank you for your answer, James. This seems to indicate that Linux
> today is something very different from what BL is about. What is udev
> and devfs? At which version of Slackware have these been introduced.
> Do Linux users in our days still have to mount devices?

I'm far from being any kind of expert on this. My observations are based on
the bits that I
(think I) understand from tech news pieces I've read. It looks like devfs was
under
development for the 2.4.x kernel series and that, because of problems, it was
dropped in
favor of udev during the 2.6.x kernel series. Briefly stated, these are both
"special-purpose file systems present on many Unix-like operating systems,
used for
presenting device files, an abstraction for accessing I/O and other
peripherals" (from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devfs ). The wikipedia entry for udev gives some
further
information--see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Udev . I'm not sure when udev
started being
used in Slackware--maybe within the last year or so. I'm actually not even
sure Slackware
_is_ using it: I read an article recently about someone who had installed the
latest Slack
and, according to their claim, it still ships with a 2.4.x kernel (though you
can of course
upgrade to 2.6.x). That makes me wonder if Patrick might not be dragging on
implementing
udev as well. But the truth of the matter is that I just don't know for sure.
Debian
unstable switched over to udev about a year or two ago.

USB devices are auto-mounted on the latest-greatest distros, but that seems
to be largely a
function of the integrated desktop environment. Gnome and KDE (probably Xfce
as well) make
an icon representing the device appear on the desktop when a USB device is
inserted. You do
have to manually unmount the device, which is typically accomplished by
right-clicking on
the device and selecting "unmount" from the resulting drop-down menu. For
leaner desktop
environments easy ways of mounting/unmounting dynamic drives are provided. A
nice little
desktop applet called mount.app is available for Windowmaker and also works
in Fluxbox and
other WM's. With that, it is simple a matter of clicking it a few times to
cycle through
available devices (floppy, CD, USB stick), then clicking on a "mount" button.
I'm not sure
how mount.app interacts with udev though, and whether it can dynamically
add/detect nodes
and mount points. I'm mostly using Gnome these days on my more bloated,
bleeding-edge Debian
or Ubuntu systems. But I think mount.app would be a nice addition to BL for
those better
disposed toward the use of rodents.

James




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