Hide Forgot
Description of problem: Hi, I have Fedora 8 and on the gnome desktop I see some icons from my partitions that I don't wan't on my gnome desktop. I don't have a problem with having my storage partition on my desktop but I also have also 4 other linux distos on my laptop and I see all of their system partitions on my desktop! I know that there is a way to disable ALL partition shortcuts but then I wouldn't see my usb drives on desktop when I plug in usb flash drives and I don't want that. So how do I remove only the shortcuts I don't want from my desktop? I saw an Ubuntu (which obviously also uses Gnome) trick which doesn't work on fedora On ubuntu only drives that are in /media are shown on the gnome desktop. I edited /etc/fstab so that partitions I don't want on desktop are mounted in /mnt - that worked on my Ubuntu but it didn't work in Fedora Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Steps to Reproduce: 1. 2. 3. Actual results: Expected results: Additional info:
I found a forum post that is relevant: http://forums.fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?t=171454&highlight=device+icons
Now the correct link :) http://forums.fedoraforum.org/forum/showpost.php?p=897548&postcount=13
Explain to me exactly what you want Fedora to do about this that should not be handled as part of Gnome upstream? Are you looking for per-user Gnome UI to allow individual users to hide partitions? If so this is something you probably need to take to upstream Gnome. Are you looking to make hal aware of /etc/fstab entries and automatically ignore them for all users? The previously provided hal policy which hid ALL local volumes was a hack, and its not clear that its appropriate as a default. You may want to have a discussion with the Hal developers concerning where PolicyKit fits into this in the future. Gnome ships Hal layer what things are mountable by the user. If Hal says its not mountable, then the Gnome desktop doesn't show it. The plan maybe to make it so PolicyKit is used in that discussion. You might want to refile against hal or search the open hal tickets for existing discussions. What to do with internal partitions has been a contentious issue since the introduction of hal policy. This article would indicate that PolicyKit is indeed the way forward on creating per-user policy concerning device access... including mountable partitions. http://searchenterpriselinux.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid39_gci1173575,00.html You should probably concentrate on understanding what the plans are for PolicyKit integration in Gnome 2.22 and thus Fedora 9
I still think hiding all non-removable media was the right thing to do, fixed partitions are what /etc/fstab is for!
Isn't the whole point of unix style mounts is the filesystem is seamless and abstract? Applications, and by extension the user, normally do not have to know or care what which physical filesystem they're dealing with. Showing icons for static mounts completely breaks this whole idea of filesystem abstraction. If the user happens to care, they can create shortcuts/symlinks/bookmarks on their desktop just like they can any other directory. Static mounts should not and need not be treated special. "static mounts" being mounts in /etc/fstab that the user has no control over anyway.
There are several different issues... none of which should be filed against gnome-desktop in a fedora ticket. I'm not closing this yet, because I want to make it clear to everyone what the different issues are and what you should probably do to have the issue seen by the 'right' people. 1) If you want things in fstab explicitly ignored by hal as default policy, then file a new bug against hal and open a thread in -devel-list. Since this is a default policy definition issue, this is probably worth another discussion..again...now that the 99-redhat-storage-policy-fixed-drives.fdi file was finally removed in F8. Finding the exactly logic that Ubuntu uses to do this(hal policy file? some sort of helper shell script?) as an implementation example to look over in the -devel-list discussion would probably help. the 99-redhat file made this issue moot by hiding all fixed partitions. With it gone, there maybe an opening to convince the hal developers to introduce fstab parsing logic to hide defined system partitions as a more sophisticated targetted approach to replace whatthe 99-redhat file use to do. 2) Hal already has explicit ignores for specific types of partitions on a case by case basis. look at 20-storage-methods.fdi . Specifically hidden recovery partitions that user's shouldn't care about. These are the sort of partitions that won't be typically defined in an fstab (for example using livecd in a laptop) and serve no useful purpose as a mountable filesystem since they contain no user data. If there are still unwanted recovery partitions showing up in user installs, we might need to have a -devel-list dicussion on how to better populate that explicit list. 3) Other fixed partitions which are not defined in fstab. This is an extremely common case for something like the Desktop Livecd usage. You can't rely on pre-existing fstab, and hiding the internal disk by default could hamper 'just works' access to user data sitting on the harddrive (fat or ntfs partition would be common here). 4) Gnome UI to actually hide individual mount points on the nautilus controlled desktop icons on a per-user basis. That is a discussion for gnome upstream and is orthogonal to a discussion concerning default hal policy regarding fixed disks. -jef
Thank you Jef for a really informative answer it is really helpful. I posted this RFE to Fedora bugzilla because I am a Fedora user. I can get involved with this issue and try to prod gnome and hal developers to discuss it and find best solution. Coming from my point of view as a user this looks like wrong way of doing things. It is not that I don't want to be involved but because I lack the knowledge of inner workings of fedora and general linux distros. If you haven't told me about 20-storage-methods.fdi I wouldn't know exactly where to look. I have some basic knowledge about hal but that is it. I love getting involved and learning new things in linux but my work and other commitment (running a NGO, LUG and nunicipal wireless project) don't give me time needed to get to know in detail all the inner workings of linux and it's sub systems. I also believe that there lots of other users that don't know anything about how linux and fedora work but that also have some suggestion about how to make Fedora and general linux experience better for them (and problaly other people also). I believe that they wouldn't go beyond posting to mailing list or maybe, maybe to bugzilla. I know that this is not up to you, but is there somebody that ordinary users could go and ask for their issues to be looked at and then decided if there is a case for it to be dealt with. When I mean dealt with I mean that that person then contacts the ones responsible for the issue at hand. You have a really informative response and I can work with that and contact hal and gnome developers and see how to fix this issue, but what I suggest is that with slight different approach and different organization effort much more of such issues would be dealt in faster way and things would go forward faster. I don't in detail how fedora is organized, but I guess that one volonteer or one redhat developer working part time on such issues would make a huge difference. Thank you once more Jef, I'm off to bug hal and gnome developers :)
Should this bug remain open and if so which version of Fedora?
(In reply to comment #8) > Should this bug remain open and if so which version of Fedora? I think it should. I'm on F9 here and I don't know exactly when, I think after using gparted, icons from all of my partitions started showing on my desktop.
This message is a reminder that Fedora 8 is nearing its end of life. Approximately 30 (thirty) days from now Fedora will stop maintaining and issuing updates for Fedora 8. It is Fedora's policy to close all bug reports from releases that are no longer maintained. At that time this bug will be closed as WONTFIX if it remains open with a Fedora 'version' of '8'. Package Maintainer: If you wish for this bug to remain open because you plan to fix it in a currently maintained version, simply change the 'version' to a later Fedora version prior to Fedora 8's end of life. Bug Reporter: Thank you for reporting this issue and we are sorry that we may not be able to fix it before Fedora 8 is end of life. If you would still like to see this bug fixed and are able to reproduce it against a later version of Fedora please change the 'version' of this bug to the applicable version. If you are unable to change the version, please add a comment here and someone will do it for you. Although we aim to fix as many bugs as possible during every release's lifetime, sometimes those efforts are overtaken by events. Often a more recent Fedora release includes newer upstream software that fixes bugs or makes them obsolete. The process we are following is described here: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/HouseKeeping
Fedora 8 changed to end-of-life (EOL) status on 2009-01-07. Fedora 8 is no longer maintained, which means that it will not receive any further security or bug fix updates. As a result we are closing this bug. If you can reproduce this bug against a currently maintained version of Fedora please feel free to reopen this bug against that version. Thank you for reporting this bug and we are sorry it could not be fixed.
This is a issue also for Fedora 10
I don't think this is an issue for Fedora 10. All you got to do is revoke the "auto mount" feature in the policy tool and then none of the partitions will be auto monted.
(In reply to comment #13) > I don't think this is an issue for Fedora 10. All you got to do is revoke the > "auto mount" feature in the policy tool and then none of the partitions will be > auto monted. It would be nice to be able to have just *some* partitions automounted though. Currently it's an all or nothing situation. Maybe DeviceKit will allow it?
Keeping fingers crossed for DeviceKit? Should we ask for this feature as a separate "bug" or reopen this one?