Episode: 255
Title: HPR0255: Pmount
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0255/hpr0255.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 14:53:34

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Hey, hey, hey, hey, damn losto here, actually dialing in, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey,
have to have a public radio episode, I know it's been a while, but I noticed I had a voice recorder on my phone and figured what the hell.
Let's give it a shot. See if this works out and if you listen to it, it is working out. Now I'm not going to continue on with my boot series, all of my license series that will be for the new year.
for the delay on that, but real life gets in the light, but what I am going to briefly
talk about is a wonderful utility underlinates for mounting removable media in particular.
As a non-root user, now a lot of distributions these days, like Ubuntu, Fedora, and everything,
kind of auto-mount capability, particularly when undergenome or KDE, and I think even
XFC, he does this to an extent, but let's say you're in a situation where you don't want
to use those heavier window managers, you want to use something, and that's not about
this one, you want to use something more like flux box or open box or any other wonderful
window managers that have a very small footprint and lightning quick and just as good as the
other ones, I think. One of the capabilities that you'll probably lose is auto-mounting
capabilities. So if you plug in your USB-MS storage device or pop that CD-ROM and CD-ROM
driver DVD, he will pop up on your desktop, but it was later waiting for a window manager
to select. Environments don't have a desktop with icons on them either. So how do you get your
device system out without having to set your FTAP directory up or file up and conclude
all the users and all that information that you want? A very simple, there's an application
called email available for just about every distribution. Slackware users, it's not
HBO package from Chess Griffin, get that. Google search that, I don't know what to
know, link is all included in the notes, I guess. But p-mount allows you to mount removable
storage devices as a user, and it will automatically create the necessary mount point for you
in Slash Media. So that's all you need to do is pass the device parameter to p-mount
and it will take care of the rest of the user, be completely accessible as a user, and
you'll be happy as a clamp. Now, once you get p-mount installed, chances are you're going
to want to configure it and add some extra parameters and that's what the Etsy Slash
p-mount.allow file is for, particularly setting up what device types can be mounted by standard
users. Now, so if you plug in your USB-mouse storage device, your firewire device or whatever,
and for some reason you get the error message, can't mount it because it's not a removable
storage device. What that generally means is that it can't mount it because it's not technically
allowed for you to mount that device so you will have to go in and add that device to the
Etsy Slash p-mount.allow file. And that's as simple as listing the devices that you want
in there on a separate line. You don't have to provide the dev and the full pass. So, for instance,
you could just put in SB1, SB2, SB3, SB1, SB1, SB2, SB3, SBc, SB1, SBc2, SBc3, SBc3, and so on.
Now, you might be saying, well, why would I want to put SB as opposed to the partition or whatever's
on it like SB1? I, some devices don't have clearly defined partitions, particularly V-fat
devices. I have an insignia media device that mounts right as SB and no separate partition
number. So, you know, just be aware of that. The best way to find out what your device is being
recognized as when you plug it in if you're at all confused. It's just do a D-message. You should
see a couple of lines that I recognize a mass storage device and it's waiting for it to settle
down. And then it will dump out a device for you in the D-message file and you just
put a P-mount that right there. Then when you're ready to unmount the device, simply
run key U-mounts and the path to the device. Now, remember, unlike the mount command, the
general mount command, you cannot provide the mount point and have it mounted. It will
cough at you and say, no, no, no, you must provide a device. So, whereas if you have your
safe floppy device set up under the F-stab to be mounted by your user account and you
pop a floppy disk in, you can mount that by typing Mount Slash D-E-V, Flash F-D-0, or
you can mount it, let's say you had it set up on an immediate directory as Mount Slash
Media, Flash Floppy. And either one of those commands we used to mount via options in F-stab
to mount the device. You cannot do that with the P-mount. You always have to use only the
device and no other parameters are required. So, for P-mount and P-U-mount, it's always a
device, not the mount point. All right. I hope that's helpful to some people. P-mount is
fantastic. Utility. And check it out and enjoy it. Enjoy those lightweight desktop
environments, a window manager, open box for the win. And don't forget about window
maker. Wonderful, wonderful window manager. Have a happy bye-bye.
And just another note, before you could actually use P-mount as a user, you have to
make that user a member of the plug dev group, that's PLUGD yet V, which will be created upon
the installation of P-mount. And that's as simple as using your distribution's
preferred management users and putting them in groups or just on the command line using
user mod with the dash capital G and plug dev as the name of the group. And the user
name, which will modify the user. All right. And of course, once they're
users added to the group, you'll have to log out and log back in as a user for the
changes to take effect. You should be able to use P-mount in to your heart's
content. Thank you for listening to Hacker Public Radio.
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