external harddisk not accessible by default

[phonixor]

I have a windows partition and some external HDs... and if i have for instance a shortcut to a file on one of them...
it wont work until i open that harddisk/partition in nautilus....

this behavior causes a lot of other issues in other programs like
#676325 - transmission

expected behavior: all plugged in hardware should always be accessible from everywhere...
its good that its not fully powered up to save battery, it is bad that this gives any other issues then a slight delay in response time from the device... (time for it to start up)

i mean nautilus knows its there... so should other progs...

also related:
#389212 - gui

[Chris Wilson (notgary-deactivatedaccount)]

I've marked this as 'Opinion' as the automounting of each and every volume can easily be a one-way trip to borking important system files, including those on any Windows partitions on your drive that you may never need to access.

[phonixor (phonixor)]

well i don't mind if it's not done at startup...
but i have shortcuts on my desktop...
and programs like transmissions, my shortcut may also request for files on those systems...
i ask that once such a request is made... then it gets mounted... now you get a "file does not exist" or something error...
( so when i click my shortcut... or when transmissions checks what is already downloaded...)

if this is not done... all those programs would have to make work arounds...
and there would be none for my shortcut issue...
i say they need to be accessible all the time... i never said anything technical about being actually mounted all the time....
... though the technical implementation is interesting too of course... :P

[Chris Wilson (notgary-deactivatedaccount)]

The problem with devising a solution for this is that there has to be some means by which external volumes are differentiated in some way, and the importance of having certain volumes mounted is going to differ from one user to the next, a situation already illustrated in the closing comment of bug #389212 - "This appears to be much too complex to be considered a paper cut.".

The bottom line is that it's better to let the user choose which volumes they want to have automounted, rather than attempting to make that decision for them, which will only end up upsetting a lot of people.

What you can do immediately is to edit your fstab to automatically mount your chosen volumes in the same directory each time your computer starts up. This guide will take you through the necessary steps http://www.tuxfiles.org/linuxhelp/fstab.html.

I think a better, longer term, solution would be the development of a graphical tool that will allow the user to edit the fstab without having to do so using a text editor, which is something that can be done at http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com

[Chris Wilson (notgary-deactivatedaccount)]

There's actually already been some discussion about this feature https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/343445

[phonixor (phonixor)]

*The bottom line is that it's better to let the user choose which volumes they want to have automounted, rather than attempting to make that decision for them, which will only end up upsetting a lot of people.*
if a program ask for it/ user clicks on a shortcut ... i think in 99.99% of the use cases... its in the users interest...
i cant really think of any situation were its not...

lik i said its not about being on startup... and you cant ask user to edit there fstab file...(well technically you can and you did... but i guess you get the idea :P)

*not being a paper cut* thats ok... as long as it gets fixed somehow :)

i will stop responding in this bug thread as it appears to be a duplicate...