[disks-admin] need to be rewritten with the new API and using hal

Bug #61728 reported by saads
66
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
GST
Invalid
Undecided
Unassigned
gnome-system-tools (Ubuntu)
Invalid
Wishlist
Ubuntu Desktop Bugs
Nominated for Hardy by Peter Makowski

Bug Description

In Dapper and previous releases there was a Disk Management application under System -> Administration. That tool is gone now. Even though it was lacking, it was the only mechanism for mounting partitions with a GUI. Now there is no such mechanism and non-experienced users will have to manually edit the /etc/fstab file in order to mount partitions.

Tags: disks-admin
Revision history for this message
Vassilis Pandis (pandisv) wrote :

Thanks for reporting this. No manual partition mounting should be neccessary. Under what circumstances would a user be required to manually mount something?

Revision history for this message
saads (shakhshir) wrote :

If they purchase a new hard disk and add it to their computer after installing Ubuntu, then there is no way for them to add it to their system graphically. No notification of a "new hard disk detected" or anything like that. Or if the user uses some other graphical tool (such as GParted) to resize and create a new partition, there is no way for them to mount it.

Revision history for this message
saads (shakhshir) wrote :

Here is a thread about a user already asking how to mount disks graphically in Edgy since that app has disappeared:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=260317

Revision history for this message
Sebastien Bacher (seb128) wrote :

disks-admin has not been converted by upstream to the new infrastructure they use. It probably need a rewrite almost from scratch to use hal to list devices too by example

Changed in gnome-system-tools:
importance: Untriaged → Wishlist
status: Needs Info → Confirmed
Changed in gst:
status: Unconfirmed → Confirmed
Revision history for this message
saads (shakhshir) wrote :

I've been looking for documentation on python-dbus and python-hal bindings, but it's very sparse. This seems like a tool that would be relatively trivial to write in python to at least provide the basic mount/unmount functionality for hard drives. Any ideas on where to get documentation?

Revision history for this message
Vassilis Pandis (pandisv) wrote :

Instead of rewriting it, can't the old disks-admin be packaged as a standalone application?

Revision history for this message
Sebastien Bacher (seb128) wrote : Re: [Bug 61728] Re: [disks-admin] need to be rewritten with the new API and using hal

Le samedi 23 septembre 2006 à 14:43 +0000, Vassilis Pandis a écrit :
> Instead of rewriting it, can't the old disks-admin be packaged as a
> standalone application?

The backend part (which does the actions) would need to be reimplemented
or replaced. The list of bugs also shows than the non-hal device listing
is far to be optimal, a proper rewrital using hal would probably not
take much longer than fixing issues without it

Revision history for this message
Sebastien Bacher (seb128) wrote :

Le vendredi 22 septembre 2006 à 19:27 +0000, saads a écrit :
> I've been looking for documentation on python-dbus and python-hal
> bindings, but it's very sparse. This seems like a tool that would be
> relatively trivial to write in python to at least provide the basic
> mount/unmount functionality for hard drives. Any ideas on where to get
> documentation?

Maybe have a look to /usr/share/hal/device-manager/DeviceManager.py from
the hal-device-manager package

Revision history for this message
Slight Slightly (slight--deactivatedaccount) wrote :

>Thanks for reporting this. No manual partition mounting should be
>neccessary. Under what circumstances would a user be required to
>manually mount something?

Windows drives don't seem to be automatically detected and mounted as of Edgy. Mine weren't, and I know of at least two other instances of same.

Revision history for this message
Frederik Elwert (frederik-elwert) wrote :

There is at lease one more important usecase for disks-admin: When using the Desktop-CD as a rescue system, disks have manually to be mounted if you want to work with them from the live system.

Besides that, disks-admin had an informational value: It gave on overview about a disks partitions, their size and free space.

I don't know about its technical background, but could pysdm serve as a basis for a successor? It is currently in universe, but Ubuntu certainly needs something in main that gets installed by default.

Revision history for this message
Exilist (sandro-grundmann) wrote :

Try this tool:

pysdm - http://pysdm.sourceforge.net/

Also available in edgy.

Revision history for this message
Alban Crequy (muadda) wrote :

Another threads with users looking for the disk manager under system-administration menu:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=285279

Revision history for this message
Jacksonz123z (ianfh) wrote :

Disks Administration was very useful for formatting Memory cards eg. SD.

Revision history for this message
Tormod Volden (tormodvolden) wrote :

Upstream has abandoned g-s-t:
"Mass closing of remaining disks-admin and boot-admin bugs, sorry for the spam.
Both tools are bitrotting, and no development is likely to happen on them."

Changed in gst:
status: Confirmed → Invalid
Revision history for this message
Wouter Stomp (wouterstomp-deactivatedaccount) wrote :

Marking as invalid, as disks-admin was removed from gnome-system-tools in ubuntu a long time ago.

Changed in gnome-system-tools:
status: Confirmed → Invalid
Revision history for this message
Wouter Stomp (wouterstomp-deactivatedaccount) wrote :

Sorry, shoudln't have closed this one. Reopened.

Changed in gnome-system-tools:
status: Invalid → Confirmed
Revision history for this message
Milan Bouchet-Valat (nalimilan) wrote :

Very old and obsolete report. See gnome-disk-utility for something better and using DeviceKit-disks, replacement of HAL (3 years after!).

Changed in gnome-system-tools (Ubuntu):
status: Confirmed → Invalid
To post a comment you must log in.
This report contains Public information  
Everyone can see this information.

Other bug subscribers

Remote bug watches

Bug watches keep track of this bug in other bug trackers.