Automounting a storage device with GNOME
Do you have an external hard drive that always mounts in /media/disk or some totally unuseful location? Here I’m going to try to explain the best way I found to have my partitions mounted exactly where I want them.
Basically GNOME handles all this stuff (removable media) with gnome-volume-manager, which uses HAL to grab information, and you can configure it with gnome-volume-properties. All the work is actually done by gnome-mount which can be configured with GConf.
In my case I have an external hard drive with two partitions, I want to have them mounted in /media/external-1 and /media/external-2.
The best way to do that is configuring HAL. There is very handy tool that allows you to see all the information available through HAL, that is hal-device. With that tool I’m able to see the following:
0: udi = '/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/volume_uuid_2D11_15EE' volume.mount_point = '' (string) volume.label = '' (string) volume.uuid = '2D11-15EE' (string) block.device = '/dev/sda1' (string) 1: udi = '/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/volume_uuid_31d943b3_b43c_4388_87db_3e2f30cf87d9' volume.mount_point = '' (string) volume.label = '' (string) volume.uuid = '31d943b3-b43c-4388-87db-3e2f30cf87d9' (string) block.device = '/dev/sda2' (string)
I have found my two parttions, the important thing is the uuid (2D11-15EE, 31d943b3-b43c-4388-87db-3e2f30cf87d9), the best thing to do is to choose a label for each partition and then the mount point will be determined automatically
To do that I have to add a HAL’s user policy file:
/usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/95userpolicy/10-external.fdi:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <deviceinfo version="0.2"> <device> <match key="block.is_volume" bool="true"> <match key="volume.uuid" string="2D11-15EE"> <merge key="volume.label" type="string">external-1</merge> </match> <match key="volume.uuid" string="31d943b3-b43c-4388-87db-3e2f30cf87d9"> <merge key="volume.label" type="string">external-2</merge> </match> </match> </device> </deviceinfo>
That’s it, now each time I plug in my hard drive the two partitions are auto mounted exactly where I want them 
But wait, I don’t like that noexec mount option that appears by default in my external-2 partition. In order to fix that I can configure gnome-mount to change the defaults, or I can set the options I want.
First I need my complete UDI:
/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/volume_uuid_31d943b3_b43c_4388_87db_3e2f30cf87d9
Then I set the proper GConf key:
gconftool-2 --type string -s /system/storage/volumes/_org_freedesktop_Hal_devices_volume_uuid_31d943b3_b43c_4388_87db_3e2f30cf87d9/mount_options "[exec]"
Yes, I know the key is huge, it’s sopposed to be “only” the volume’s UUID (31d943b3_b43c_4388_87db_3e2f30cf87d9) but I guess they forgot to allow the fancy way.
In order to have the right mount point I could have done the following instead, but with this the volumes will appear with no label.
gconftool-2 --type string -s /system/storage/volumes/_org_freedesktop_Hal_devices_volume_uuid_32d943b3_b43c_4388_87db_3e2f30cf87d9/mount_point "external-2"
I hope you find this useful.
Hi, thanks for the info.
I m using FC8 with XP dual boot and two hard drives (sda, sdb). All those partitions are getting automounted to /medaia/ and shown on the desktop.
Is there any way in which i can specify not to show them on my desktop n not to mount on /media.
I created entries in fstab to mount them on to /mnt/.
Now i don’t want to mount them on /media n show them on desktop.
Thanks in advance.
Mohan.
mohan
November 29, 2007 at 11:47
mohan: yeah, just go to System -> Preferences -> Hardware -> Removable Drives and Media
FelipeC
November 29, 2007 at 16:36
Hi Felipe C, thanks for the reply!
I did that, even then also my drives that were mounted(on /mnt/) are displayed on to my desktop.
Is there any configuration file related to my desktop where in i can modify not to show them on my desktop?
mohan
November 30, 2007 at 13:27
mohan: gconftool-2 –set /apps/nautilus/desktop/volumes_visible –type boolean false
FelipeC
November 30, 2007 at 15:21
Hi Felipe C, i just checked ur reply! it worked out for me. thanks.
mohan
December 13, 2007 at 9:30
[...] automount under gnome so it doesn’t arbitrarily automount partitions under /media/disk?? http://felipec.wordpress.com/2006/12/28/automounting-a-storage-device-with-gnome [...]
Elias Hickman’s blog » Automount
December 25, 2007 at 16:22
I guess this could also apply to SATA drives (really dumb question).
Elias
December 25, 2007 at 17:04
I have a Windows partition that I don’t want automounted, but I do want any true removable drives to automount. How can I arrange that? Is it necessary to use HAL’s UDI and enter all of that crap?
griff5w
January 22, 2008 at 22:01
hi, I have my FC8 intalled and I don’t even get any of my external drive(with usb powered) detected…I’ve tried to mount it manually but it seems not plugged.
note) I have this external drive under XP and run well thought, and also I have a huge external hard drive which is not usb powered (AC powered) and a USB disk and both work…this is such a long issue which I also experience in my ubuntu 7.1
any idea?
Li
February 26, 2008 at 4:09
It is much easier to change the labels on the filesystems on the two external partitions, instead of messing with HAL.
See for example https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RenameUSBDrive
Prasinos
August 3, 2008 at 19:31
Prasinos: except when the filesystem doesn’t have support for labels.
FelipeC
August 3, 2008 at 19:48
Works on Fedora Core 9 x86
_
Kaloyan
October 18, 2008 at 12:46
[...] Automounting a storage device with GNOME: 3,126 [...]
100,000 views, and some stats « Felipe Contreras
March 20, 2009 at 1:57
Can this be done without using UUID and just using the label? So, for example, if one of my drives fails and I move to a backup drive, changing the label on the backup drive to the one from the failed drive, I don’t have to go through this process again?
led_belly
October 16, 2009 at 1:24
@led_belly yeah, it’s better to just set the label (if your file-system supports that), then you don’t have to do anything else
FelipeC
October 16, 2009 at 1:38