Re: magicdev [was Re: Gnome-vfs blocks cddb-capplet. Why?]

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

Dick Porter <dick ximian com> writes:

> If we put magicdev-like functionality in GNOME, can we please make it
> *NOT* do:
> 
> 1) execute anything automatically from the cd on cd insertion.  This is
>    a particularly stupid M$ innovation that we can well do without.

It has prompted since a very long time ago.

> 2) lock the cd drive drawer, so I have to hunt through menus just to
>    get a cd out again

Not sure what you are referring to.

 - If the CD is mounted, then the kernel locks the device. So,
   yes, automounting causes the door to be locked. You can unmount
   the CD any way you want and the door will unlock.

 - If a CD player program is running on an audio CD, it may lock
   the device. All the GNOME CD player programs were modified
   to not do this.

Magicdev _never_ locked the device itself. A very early version
of magicdev explicitely unlocked the device, but that was a bad
idea and removed.

> when magicdev appeared in the Red Hat 6.x releases, it was fantastically
> irritating.  It wasn't easily removed, because the libgnome rpm depended on
> it iirc (I don't like using --force or --nodeps, because that leads to
> extreme system breakage.)  I'd hope that it has improved since then.
>
> In fact, magicdev was one of the reasons that finally pushed me into
> switching to Debian for all my machines; for someone that starting using
> Red Hat with the "Mother's Day" release, that was a pretty drastic change.

Well, you _could_ have just turned it off with one check box in the
control center, but hey, I guess it's less fun than switching to
Debian.
 
Regards,
                                        Owen