gnome-mount(1)gnome-mount(1)NAME
gnome-mount - Mount drives and volumes using HAL and read settings from
the GNOME desktop configuration system gconf.
SYNOPSIS
gnome-mount [-?|--help] [-v] [-n] [-t] [-b] [-d /dev/file | -h
/org/fd/Hal/udi | -p nickname] [--unmount | --eject | --write-settings
| --erase-settings | --show-settings] [--mount-point where-to-mount]
[--mount-options opt1,opt2=foo,opt3] [--extra-mount-options
opt4,opt5=bar] [--fstype fstype-to-use]
DESCRIPTION
This program is used to mount and unmount file systems for GNOME desk‐
top users. It can also be used to eject discs from CD drives and other
devices that needs to be ejected. For example, iPod's needs this to
make the "Do not disconnect" message go away.
Normally, this program is invoked by software in the GNOME stack
(specifically gnome-vfs-daemon and gnome-volume-manager ). End users
should never have to deal with gnome-mount directly on the command
line, nor should they have to read this manual page.
Mounting a file system into the root file system involves a certain
degree of configuration and as such is subject to whatever preferences
an user might have. gnome-mount allows the user to control the mount
point location, the mount options and what file system to use for
mounting a file system. The settings are read from the gconf database
(which is per-user) and can also be overridden on the command line
using the appropriate parameters. See below.
SPECIFYING THE TARGET
The target (e.g. the partition or file system to mount, unmount or
eject) can be specified using the HAL UDI (Unique Device Identifier),
e.g. /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/volume_uuid_E18B_10EC , the name of
the special device file, e.g. /dev/sda1 or a pseudonym. The latter is
a textual string used to locate the target and it makes gnome-mount
search for the target by comparing the given textual string to the
mount points and file system labels.
DETERMINING SETTINGS
Settings (e.g. mount point, mount options, file system type) are read
in the order below. Note that each option is treated individually; for
example it is valid for a drive to only specify the mount point setting
and not the mount options. Also note that the even if the drive speci‐
fies mount options, these can be overridden on a per-volume basis.
FILE SYSTEM DEFAULTS
First, default mount options are read from /system/stor‐
age/defaults/FS_TYPE/ for the probed file system type of the
volume. The option uid=, is treated specially by gnome-mount and
will be replaced by uid=UID_OF_USER to cope with the fact that
the uid is a function of the user calling it.
PER DRIVE
Second, the gconf tree at /system/storage/drives/UDI_OF_DRIVE/
is consulted for options that depend on what drive the volume
belongs to. For example, this is useful for configuring that
volumes inserted into a given drive is always mounted at the
same location. For example, this can be used to emulate
/etc/fstab behaviour by where CD media is always mounted at e.g.
/media/cdrom
PER VOLUME
Third, the gconf tree at /system/storage/drives/UDI_OF_VOLUME/
is consulted for options that are specific to a particular piece
of media and as such depends on either the file system label
(e.g. EOS_DIGITAL ) or the file system UUID (e.g. E18B_10EC )
or both.
COMMANDLINE OPTIONS
Users can pass --mount-point , --mount-options or --fstype on
the commandline to override settings.
EXTRA COMMANDLINE OPTIONS
Finally, if mount options are passed via --extra-mount-options
these are not replacing the mount options, they are simply
added. This is useful for doing e.g.
gnome-mount --extra-mount-options remount,exec -d /dev/sda1
to remount a volumes such that programs can be run from the
media. This is useful for e.g. gnome-volume-manager if it dis‐
covers an autorun file on the media.
PASSWORDED MEDIA
gnome-mount supports passworded media through the org.freedesk‐
top.Hal.Device.Volume.Crypto interface supported by HAL and this
includes volumes formatted in a way that adheres to the LUKS (Linux
Unified Key Setup) specification. In addition, gnome-mount uses gnome-
keyring to retrieve and store the pass phrase. If no key can be
retrieved, gnome-mount will prompt the user for one. In addition, if
the keyring is locked, the user may be prompted to unlock it via stan‐
dard gnome-keyring mechanisms.
PRIVILEGES
gnome-mount is intended for unprivileged users and HAL ultimately con‐
trols if the calling user is allowed to mount, unmount or eject volumes
as well as what mount options are valid. As such, requests may be
denied. See the (human readable) exception returned from HAL for
details if a request fails.
Note that HAL has a notion of what mount options are valid for a given
volume. They are listed in the HAL property volume.mount.valid_options
on the device object representing the volume to mount. Consult lshal(1)
for details. Also note that HAL by default appends the options nosuid
and nodev to prevent privilege escalation.
In addition to using HAL as the mechanism for mounting file systems,
the /etc/fstab file is also consulted as HAL will refuse to mount any
file system listed in this file as it would violate system policy. If
this is the case, gnome-mount will invoke mount(1) as the calling user
rather than invoking the Mount method on the org.freedesk‐
top.Hal.Device.Volume interface on the device object representing the
volume / drive. This means that settings (mount point, mount options,
file system type) read by gnome-mount are not passed along as these are
already specified in the /etc/fstab file and there are no mechanism to
override them. When parsing the /etc/fstab file, gnome-mount (and also
HAL for that matter) resolves symbolic links and also respects the
LABEL= and UUID= notations. For example, if this line is in /etc/fstab
LABEL=MyVolume /mnt/myvolume auto user,defaults 0 0
then gnome-mount mounts the file system with the label MyVolume via
mount(1) and /etc/fstab rather than using the HAL mechanisms.
OPTIONS
Options available for the gnome-mount command:
-v, --verbose
Verbose operation, shows debug messages.
-n, --no-ui
Don't show any dialogs the user needs to dismiss. If X11 is
available, gnome-mount may pop up transient notification bubbles
e.g. suggesting the user to remount a volume with different
options to streamline access to file systems with ownership
attributes. This is the option that storage policy daemons such
as gnome-volume-manager should invoke gnome-mount in. File man‐
agers, however, such as Nautilus , should never use this option
as the user should get e.g. an error dialog if he tries to
access a volume with a missing, unsupported or unknown file sys‐
tem.
-b, --block
Allow gnome-mount to block even if an error occured. By default,
gnome-mount will daemonize so it can return control to the
invoking application as soon as possible (e.g. when an operation
either fails or succeeds ) while still showing an error dialog
to the end user. Useful when debugging.
-u, --unmount
Use this for unmounting rather than mounting. If gnome-mount is
invoked as gnome-umount (a symlink to gnome-mount ) then this
option is automatically selected.
-e, --eject
Use this for ejecting rather than mounting. If gnome-mount is
invoked as gnome-eject (a symlink to gnome-mount ) then this
option is automatically selected.
-d, --device
Specify target volume by the special device file.
-h, --hal-udi
Specify target volume by HAL UDI (Unique Device Identifier).
-p, --pseudonym
Specify target volume by pseudonym. See above for how this
works.
-t, --text
Never use X11 dialogs or notification bubbles even if an X11
server is available. Also prohibits the use of gnome-keyring to
retrieve pass phrases for passworded media because this might
require unlocking the keyring which happens through an X11 dia‐
log out of process. Useful for command line operation.
-m, --mount-point
Specify mount point to use; don't include /media as this is
automatically appened by the mechanism used to mount, e.g. the
HAL methods.
-o, --mount-options
Specify mount options. Separate by comma.
-f, --fstype
Specify file system type. This is useful for using e.g. the
msdos file system instead of the vfat file system.
--write-settings
Instead of mounting a drive, specify what options to store in
the gconf database. Can be used on both drives and volumes. Be
careful using this with the --device option as optical drives
(among others) use the same special device file for both the
drive and the volume. One trick is to ensure the optical drive
has no media when configuring it via this option. Another pos‐
sibility is to use the HAL UDI instead.
--display-settings
Display settings for a drive or volume.
--erase-settings
Erase settings for a drive or volume.
RETURN CODES
gnome-mount will return zero if the request succeeded or non-zero if it
failed. Note that gnome-mount is specifically designed to run in a
graphical user environment and as such all error reporting (and resolu‐
tion) is through X11 dialogs. For example, if HAL reports that a volume
could not be mounted because of a missing file system driver, gnome-
mount might, one day, launch a tool to ask the user if he wants to
download and install the driver. In a similar way, all error dialogs
are presented via X11 dialogs to the user as well.
EXAMPLE
We want to make sure that the discs inserted into an optical drive are
always mounted at /media/cdrecorder instead of using the default which
is using the label specified in the iso9660 or udf file system header.
Assuming that the drive is empty and the special device file for the
drive is /dev/hdc the following command will work
gnome-mount --write-settings
--device /dev/hdc
--mount-point cdrecorder
This can be inspected via the --display-settings option and the set‐
tings can also be erased via the --erase-settings option. Also note
that gconf-editor(1) can be used for tasks like these.
HARDWARE THAT CANNOT BE POLLED
HAL polls most storage devices for media insertion / removal and main‐
tains the list of devices exported. However, some hardware cannot be
polled for media changes without making noise or for other reasons. PC
floppy drives, Zip drives connected through an IDE interface and broken
optical drives falls into this category.
For such hardware HAL only exports the drive and rather than exporting
volume as childs of the drive, the org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.Volume
interface is exported on the drive itself. gnome-mount supports this
but it means that it is impossible to know ahead of time what file sys‐
tem is on the media in the problematic drive, so in this case gnome-
mount passes auto as the file system type and passes the mount options
uid=UID_OF_USER as most media in such devices are formatted with either
the vfat , udf or iso9660 file systems.
This also means that per-volume settings are not possible; one can only
specify settings per-drive.
AUTHOR
gnome-mount was written by David Zeuthen <david@fubar.dk>.
SEE ALSOfstab(5), mount(8), umount(8), eject(1), cryptsetup(8), gconftool-2(1),
gconf-editor(1), lshal(1)
http://www.gnome.org/projects/gconf/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME_Keyring
http://freedesktop.org/Software/hal
http://luks.endorphin.org
gnome-mount(1)