ewe2
14-11-2005, 06:20 PM
Thought I'd share one or two hints about living with ubuntu/kubuntu linux.
I moved to this distro the other week after getting a shiny new 200GB SATA drive and ran into my first roadblock, the SATA controller was too old to recognise a self-speed drive, so it had to be jumpered, effectively cutting its speed by approximately half :( Then I had issues with grub not booting properly from the MBR (for no good reason I can see), so I had to hack in a boot manager to pick it up from the first partition.
After all that it wasn't so bad: the only major hassle was configuring KDE the way I like to do things ie the old skool way. Firstly, Kubuntu doesn't tell you but it likes to assume you want to use LVM and EVMS. For me, it assumed LVM for my legacy IDE drive, so that was easily sorted (after a nervous moment or two. I've lost nearly an entire drive of data to LVM and I don't trust it.) EVMS is part of the system to sense when removable media such as card readers, CD/DVD's and usb keys are used. It's an extension of the standard hotplug system, which is fine. But having used linux for 10 years I LIKE to manually mount my drives, because I prefer to know what's connected, and not simply assume it is by merely inserting the media.
If you're like me, KDE's innocent attempts to attract your attention to the fact that a CD IS IN THE TRAY is by blatting directory windows all over the desktop is just infuriating.
If you know where your CDROM's etc are usually mounted and you have no trouble managing this for yourself, here are the steps in kubuntu (and I assume something similar in ubuntu) to take:
1. Find Kcontrol (Control Center), go to KDE Components and click Service Manager. Click the checkbox for KDED Media Manager, make sure it's highlighted and click stop to stop that service. The media manager is responsible for taking the messages from the underlying EVMS system and turning that into something an associated application can use, like konqueror's file manager.
2. Here's the heavy lifting part: Edit /etc/evms.conf and look for the sections that have:
exclude = [ ]
You'll find them in the legacy_devices {} and sysfs_devices {} sections.
Add the drives you want to exclude from being auto-mounted, for example I have
exclude = [ hdb hdd sdd ]
to avoid my two burners and my card reader. Bluetooth and usb devices I do want autodetected, so I leave them out.
3. restart two services:
# /etc/init.d/evms restart && /etc/init.d/dbus restart
And you should be done! Now you can have your own device links as icons on your desktop or (like me) organize it on your friendly gkrellm filesystem section :) I'll put down some more customizations I like in future bits :angel:
PS If anyone has the Ubuntu equivalent of this (for the GNOME desktop), I'd love to hear about it.
I moved to this distro the other week after getting a shiny new 200GB SATA drive and ran into my first roadblock, the SATA controller was too old to recognise a self-speed drive, so it had to be jumpered, effectively cutting its speed by approximately half :( Then I had issues with grub not booting properly from the MBR (for no good reason I can see), so I had to hack in a boot manager to pick it up from the first partition.
After all that it wasn't so bad: the only major hassle was configuring KDE the way I like to do things ie the old skool way. Firstly, Kubuntu doesn't tell you but it likes to assume you want to use LVM and EVMS. For me, it assumed LVM for my legacy IDE drive, so that was easily sorted (after a nervous moment or two. I've lost nearly an entire drive of data to LVM and I don't trust it.) EVMS is part of the system to sense when removable media such as card readers, CD/DVD's and usb keys are used. It's an extension of the standard hotplug system, which is fine. But having used linux for 10 years I LIKE to manually mount my drives, because I prefer to know what's connected, and not simply assume it is by merely inserting the media.
If you're like me, KDE's innocent attempts to attract your attention to the fact that a CD IS IN THE TRAY is by blatting directory windows all over the desktop is just infuriating.
If you know where your CDROM's etc are usually mounted and you have no trouble managing this for yourself, here are the steps in kubuntu (and I assume something similar in ubuntu) to take:
1. Find Kcontrol (Control Center), go to KDE Components and click Service Manager. Click the checkbox for KDED Media Manager, make sure it's highlighted and click stop to stop that service. The media manager is responsible for taking the messages from the underlying EVMS system and turning that into something an associated application can use, like konqueror's file manager.
2. Here's the heavy lifting part: Edit /etc/evms.conf and look for the sections that have:
exclude = [ ]
You'll find them in the legacy_devices {} and sysfs_devices {} sections.
Add the drives you want to exclude from being auto-mounted, for example I have
exclude = [ hdb hdd sdd ]
to avoid my two burners and my card reader. Bluetooth and usb devices I do want autodetected, so I leave them out.
3. restart two services:
# /etc/init.d/evms restart && /etc/init.d/dbus restart
And you should be done! Now you can have your own device links as icons on your desktop or (like me) organize it on your friendly gkrellm filesystem section :) I'll put down some more customizations I like in future bits :angel:
PS If anyone has the Ubuntu equivalent of this (for the GNOME desktop), I'd love to hear about it.