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baslinux - Re: [BL] RE : Re: can't mount a partition

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  • From: baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • To: baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [BL] RE : Re: can't mount a partition
  • Date: Sat, 4 Aug 2007 08:45:16 -0500 (CDT)

On Sat, 4 Aug 2007, Czerno wrote:

The naive question comes to mind, why doesn't Linux itself create
"nodes" as required ? I checked "dmesg", and sure the system detects
<hdb5> at boot time. Shouldn't it "mknod" accordingly by itself ?

So far as I can see, this was a long-running dilemma for Linux. The original solution was to have the system autocreate every imaginable device file (all those entries under /dev are known as device files) on system start-up. This meant that the computer ended up with a /dev directory full of entries, 99% of which would never be used. You can likely appreciate the heightened need for a solution that works more effectively and dynamically with the proliferation of hot-pluggable drives and storage media (e.g., flash drives, digital cameras and music players, etc.). Later in the 2.4.x kernel series they came up with ways of doing something like what you suggest (auto-creating needed /dev entries at boot time or on connection of said device to the system). The current solution that works pretty well in the 2.6.x kernel series is called udev. That won't work for the 2.2.x kernel BL uses though, and may have undesireable overhead even if it did. As you will be aware, I am only giving background information here rather than providing any solution. Sorry :)

And to add a new one :
I have : "mount /dev/sbpcd0 /cdr" in my /etc/rc script; if the CDROM
tray
is empty at boot time (as it usually will be) then the system retries
3 or
4 times before abandoning the mount operation. It's a small
annoyance, is
it possible though to make the "mount" line conditional so that it is
not
attempted or at least not retried if no CD is in the device ?

Under BL I think your best solution is going to be to transfer that line from from /etc/rc to /etc/fstab and to add a little more info to it. I would say it should look something like

----------------------------------------------------
/dev/sbpcd0 /cdr iso9660 user,noauto 0 0
----------------------------------------------------

That would keep the drive from being mounted by the system at boot-up, regardless of whether there is a CD in it or not. You would mount the CD drive by issuing the command mount /cdr. You could alias that command if you didn't want to have to type so much to mount it. Hope that helps.

James




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