Re: A possibly foolish technical question...

[Bruce Smith <bruce@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Turns out that when I want to mount floppies (and maybe other things), I've
> got to become root to do it. Now, this is not a terrible thing, but I really
> have a problem with being able to access tuff on a filesystem so mounted. I
> colleague tells me this condition also applied to zip drives, etc. 
> 
> I do not like this. I don't. Honest.  Having convinced the system administra-
> tor to insert a floppy and mount it, I want to run apps, copy to and from,
> and otherwise enjoy all the benefits of device use.  As a system administrator,
> I want to keep my users happy, and I don't want to grant them (or their apps)
> any more priveledges than are needed. I also hate listening to these people 
> complain just because they can't get to some stinky little floppy.

I use the "noauto" and "user" parameter in /etc/fstab.
"noauto" says not to mount the floppy on boot,
and "user" lets any user mount it as long as they don't
change any of the mount parameterers.
I have my floppy, cdrom, and a couple HD partitions setup
this way because I'm to lazy to "su" to root for mounts.
Here are some examples from my /etc/fstab file:

/dev/fd0        /mnt/fd0        msdos   noauto,user                     0 0
/dev/fd0        /mnt/fdx        ext2    noauto,user                     0 0
/dev/scd0       /mnt/cdrom      iso9660 noauto,ro,user                  0 0
/dev/sdb1       /mnt/redhat     ext2    noauto,user                     0 0
/dev/sda1       /w95            vfat    noauto,defaults,user,uni_xlate  0 0

To make the mount work with a user, only specify the directory
name in /etc/fstab.  i.e.  "mount /mnt/fd0" & "umount /mnt/fd0".

Hope that's what you are looking for!  Later,

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Bruce Smith                bruce@armintl.com
System Administrator / Network Administrator
Armstrong International, Inc.
Three Rivers, Michigan  49093  USA
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