gnome-control-center is missing setting for action to take when removable hard drive or usb key is inserted

[Rocko]

gnome-control-center is missing setting for action to take when removable hard drive or usb key is inserted. After upgrading to oneiric, this action has been reset to 'browse media' and there isn't a way to change it in System Settings. 'Removable Media' has settings for DVDs, Bluray, Software, and many other things, but not hard drive/removable media.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
Package: gnome-control-center 1:3.1.90-0ubuntu2
Uname: Linux 3.1.0-rc4-git-20110831.1150 x86_64
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sun Sep 4 07:34:21 2011
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Beta amd64 (20110330)
SourcePackage: gnome-control-center
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to oneiric on 2011-09-02 (1 days ago)

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for your bug report, what other action would you want to get for disks? is that worth a choice? what would be the choice?

[Rocko (rockorequin)]

In Natty and previously there was a checkbox in nautilus' preferences under the Media tab, saying 'Browse media when inserted' and it would be good to have this in Oneiric. I think that's all that is needed - it's just that it has disappeared from the settings in Oneiric.

There was a boolean gconf setting for this in Natty, /apps/nautilus/preferences/media_automount_open, which is being ignored in Oneiric.

[Chris (fabricator4)]

I agree with Rocko. If I'm working in a terminal window and plug a USB drive in to get some files or do a backup to it, the absolute last thing I want is for Nautilus to open up by itself. I just spent half an hour trying to find where this option had been moved to, only to find that apparently it's been removed completely.

I'm sure there's a way to jigger Nautilus so that it will behave, but I'm shocked that the option to do it easily has been removed. This is not "Wishlist" importance, the lack of this simple feature will be abhorrent to many people.

Chris

[Chris (fabricator4)]

I changed this from gnome-control-center to Nautilus because it is the removal of the 'media' tab that caused the loss of the feature to be able to disable 'browse media when inserted'.

It seems to be a Nautilus problem, rather than just a general configuration problem. I guess a workaround would be to uninstall Nautilus and use a different file browser that either does not browse media as soon as it is inserted, or has the option to not do so.

Chris.

[Chris (fabricator4)]

On investigation, it seems that if you open system settings and then click on "Removable Media", Down the bottom there's a checkbox 'Never prompt or start programs on media insertion'.

If this is unchecked Nautilus will not open a file view for a USB pendrive or other device when it is plugged in. This is not obvious when coming from earlier versions, because it was separate to "removable media" and a setting in Nautilus itself.

Chris

[Rocko (rockorequin)]

But what if you'd like it to prompt to run programs when media is inserted, but don't want to auto-browse media when inserted? Didn't it let you do that in past versions?

[Rocko (rockorequin)]

Anyway, thanks for the info: it was really annoying having five nautilus windows pop up several seconds apart every time I plugged in my USB hub.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

it's a valid design wishlist, you might want to report it to GNOME

[Chris (fabricator4)]

Yes, I agree with both, so I tried it. I left the checkbox disabled, but set DVD video to "Movie Player". I then inserted a USB pendrive, and a DVD movie into the computer.

Ubuntu opened Movie Player and tried to play the DVD, but Nautilus did not open.

It seems that the required behaviour is already programmed. :-)

If anything, I think the logic and wording needs some work, but the functionality is exactly what is required. Because there's been so many changes to our systems over the last year it's a problem if we come in with pre-conceived ideas that no longer fit. ;-)

Chris

[Rocko (rockorequin)]

>Because there's been so many changes to our systems
>over the last year it's a problem if we come in
> with pre-conceived ideas that no longer fit

Do you mean if we come in with preconceived ideas like an understanding of language? :-)

It's great that the functionality is already there, but the wording is plain wrong. If you had 'Never prompt or start programs on media insertion' set, then when it tried to the play the video it was simply not doing what it said it would. That's a bug!

The fact that your choices get disabled when you tick the 'Never prompt' box implies that those choices are now irrelevant - which says to me that whoever designed this got the wording right but whoever implemented it got it wrong.

[Dave Vasilevsky (djvasi)]

It makes a certain amount of sense to pop up the Nautilus window when a USB key is inserted with a single filesystem on it. But--to take a degenerate case--if an external drive with 100 partitions is inserted, opening up windows for all 100 is clearly never the right thing to do.

So perhaps browse-on-insert should only apply to single-partition devices?