Re: Experimental patches for linux usability

[Samphan Raruenrom <samphan nectec or th>]

Julien Olivier wrote:
> Hi
>
> As a user I think that would be a great think ! But you still have to
> remember that the problem also exists for floppies and USB storage
> media. The problem is that floppies and USB storage media aren't
> physically locked. That means that, even if they are still mounted, you
> can remove them easily. But removing a floppy or a USB storage edia
> while mounted can be dangerous.
>
> So, my question is: wouldn't it be possible to extend your solution to
> floppies and USB storage media ?

Hmm... Actually, yes.  I also have 2 other experimental work to
accomplish the whole requirement :-

1) usb auto-mount/umount - base on linux hot-plug

The rough result (on my machine) is that when you plug a usb
drive (or cdrom), it'll be auto-mounted, its icon instantly appear
on GNOME desktop. When you unplug it, it'll be auto-umounted
and its icon disappear.

A lot of work NEED to be done on the kernel side because
you have to be able to force-umount it in case any file is still open.
I remember force-umount implement only for NFS? maybe I'm wrong.

2) to be able to mount vfat synchronously
OR some deamon (magicdev?) to flush vfat buffer periodically

Many users experience problem with incomplete write because of
linux buffer optimization. VFAT driver never write anything
to the disk when a program tell it to. It just set the dirty flag.
I think it is possible to add the optional mount mode "sync"
to vfat (currently only nfs support this mode). The patch will be
surprisingly small but I don't know whether the kernel people will
accept the idea. Maybe it's stupid to mount a disk-base filesystem
synchronously (as oppose to nfs) so that's why they not implement it
before?