Drive Mount Applet


Table of Contents
Drive Mount Applet

Drive Mount Applet

Drive Mount Applet, shown in , allows you to quickly and easily mount and unmount various types of drives and filesystems on your computer. To add this applet to a Panel, right-click on the Panel and choose + + + +Panel+ + + + + ->Add to panel+ + + + + ->Applet+ + + + + ->Utility+ + + + + ->Drive Mount+ + + + .

Figure 1. Drive Mount Applet

NoteBackground Information for Beginners
 

Many filesystems on Linux and Unix systems must be manually mounted and unmounted. After a filesystem is mounted, you can read and write to it. When you are finished with a filesystem, you should unmount it. It is important to unmount removable drives, such as floppy disks and Zip disks, before removing the media, because Linux and Unix systems do not always write the changes made immediately. They typically buffer the changes made to the disk in order to improve the speed of the system. Partitions on fixed drives, such as your hard drive, are typically mounted automatically when your computer boots and unmounted when it shuts down. Removable media must be mounted and unmounted by hand, such as by using Drive Mount applet.

The "root filesystem" is the main filesystem on your computer starting with "/" (root). Other filesystems are associated with directories inside the root filesystem. These are called "mount points", which are just empty directories. When a filesystem is mounted, their contents appear inside this directory. As an example, most systems create a mount point "/mnt/floppy" which is just an empty directory if your floppy drive is not mounted, and which contains the contents of your floppy if the floppy drive is mounted.

Usage

To mount or unmount a drive, simply click on the Drive Mount Applet icon with the left mouse button. For drives which can eject their media, such as most CDROM's and JAZ drives, you can eject the drive by clicking on the icon with the right mouse button and selecting Eject. To browse the contents of the drive with the GNOME File Manager, select Browse.

Right-clicking on the applet brings up a menu containing the following items:

  • Browse shows the contents of the drive using the GNOME File Manager. The drive must be mounted for this to work.

  • Eject ejects the storage medium for drives which can be ejected, such as CDROM's and JAZ drives.

  • Properties opens the Properties dialog.

  • Help displays this document.

  • About shows basic information about Drive Mount Applet, including the applet's version and the author's name.

The mount point and mount status of a drive is shown in a tooltip if the cursor is left over the applet for a short time, as shown in .

Figure 2. Drive Mount Applet showing tooltip

Customization

You can customize Drive Mount applet by right-clicking on it and choosing Properties. This will open the Properties dialog(shown in ), which allows you to change various settings.

Figure 3. Properties dialog

The properties are:

  • Mount Point This is the mount point used when mounting the drive. If you are unfamiliar with mount points, this is an empty directory which will hold the contents of the drive whenever the drive is mounted. Mount points can occur anywhere in your filesystem, but the convention is to put all mount points for removable drives in the /mnt directory.

  • Update in seconds This is the interval in seconds at which Drive Mount refreshes its icon by checking with the mount status. This is only important if you sometimes mount or unmount a drive using a command or application besides Drive Mount sometimes.

  • Icon This determines the icons (one for unmounted and one for mounted) displayed for the drive. There are icon sets for most of the commonly used drives(floppy, CDROM, Zip, hard disk, and JAZ). They are shown in . You may also select Custom; this allows you to specify your own icons.

    Figure 4. Icons for Mounted and Unmounted Drives of Various Types

    Notice that shows the icons for the unmounted and mounted states of (from left to right) floppy, CDROM, Zip, JAZ, and hard disk drives.

  • Custom icon for mounted A custom icon which is displayed when the drive is mounted. This option is only available if the Icon: selection is set to "Custom".

  • Custom icon for not mounted A custom icon which is displayed when the drive is not mounted. This option is only available if the Icon: selection is set to "Custom".

  • Scale size to panel Selecting this option scales the size of the mounted and unmounted icons with the Panel's size. If this option is not set the icon sizes are fixed, independent of the size of the Panel. Selecting this option typically makes for a nicer appearance. For very small Panel sizes, unselecting this option may be useful, as it forces the applet to appear rotated and larger, which makes it easier to see.

  • Use automount friendly status test Select this option if you use automount, otherwise leave it unselected.

    NoteInformation for Advanced Users
     

    The default command used by Drive Mountto test whether a drive is mounted is stat and would cause the drive to actually be mounted if the user is using automount. If this button is selected, it uses mount instead, which does not cause automount to mount the drive. The reason this button is not selected by default is that mount is more cpu intensive than stat.

After you have made all the changes you want, click on OK to apply the changes and close the Properties dialog. To cancel the changes and return to previous values, click the Close button.

Configuring Your System

WarningFor Advanced Users
 

This section is intended for system administrators and advanced users.

In order for Drive Mount Applet to work properly, the system may need to be configured by the system administrator, using root priveleges. This section provides a very basic introduction.

Information describing the mount point and filesystem type of each drive is kept in /etc/fstab. This can be configured by hand or by using the linuxconf application. For drives which do not always have a single filesystem type (such as a floppy drive which may have msdos or ext2 filesystems), you should use "auto" for the filesystem type. Each device has a single line in /etc/fstab of the following form:
    /dev/fd0        /mnt/floppy      auto    noauto,rw,user  0 0
    
This entry describes the first floppy device (/dev/fd0) as having a mount point of /mnt/floppy, a variable filesystem type which should be automatically detected, and the following configurations: "noauto" Do not automatically mount the drive when the computer is booted, "rw" The drive is readable and writable, and "user" Users have permission to mount the drive. These, along with the last two fields which we do not describe here, are discussed in detail in the fstab man pages, available by typing man fstab or through the GNOME Help Browser.

The linuxconf application provides a graphical interface to controlling these filesystems. To start linuxconf, just type linuxconf in a shell window (you must log in as root). Select + + + + +Config+ + + + + + ->File systems+ + + + + + ->Access local drive+ + + + + . To edit an entry, just select it. linuxconf is meant to be easy to use, and has its own internal help system to guide you through the process. You may also add new entries by selecting the Add button.

Troubleshooting and Understanding Error Messages

If you do not have your system configured properly, you may encounter certain error messages when trying to mount or access certain drives. Here are some of the more common error messages and their causes:

  • "mount: /dev/fd0 is not a valid block device" The most common cause for this error is that the drive (in this example, /dev/fd0, corresponding to the floppy drive) is empty.

  • "mount: only root can mount /dev/fda on /mnt/floppy" You do not have permission to mount this drive. Contact the system administrator, who can give you permission.

    NoteNote for System Administrators
     

    You can set a drive to be mountable and unmountable by users by adding "users" to the mount options (fourth column) in /etc/fstab. This may be done by hand or by using linuxconf, using the Local volume tab in + + + + + + + +Config+ + + + + + + + + ->File systems+ + + + + + + + + ->Access local drive+ + + + + + + + . After you select the correct drive from the list, it will show you the Volume specifications. Click on the Options tab, and select the User mountable button.

  • "mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/cdrom, or too many mounted file systems" This error can be caused by several problems. It is most commonly caused by having the write filesystem type, such as trying to mount a music CDROM as if it held data, or trying to mount an msdos formatted floppy as ext2.