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moririn

Member

Registered: 2023-05-10

Posts: 3

Prevent Konsole & file managers triggering systemd automount

Hello,
I have an internal drive set up in /etc/fstab using systemd's automount and idle-timeout features. Then, in $HOME, I have a symlink to a directory on that drive. I have noticed that when opening Konsole or a file manager, which both open in $HOME, it will trigger the drive to automount.

When running st instead of Konsole no automount was triggered. Trying to directly access the umounted file system through the GTK file picker wouldn't trigger any mounting at all. If I "bury" the symlink in a subdirectory of $HOME the unwanted automounting is not triggered (inspired by this thread). The file managers I tried were Dolphin and lf, both of which caused mounting from viewing $HOME. I encountered the same issue when trying a bind mount in place of the symlink.

Correction: GTK file picker does trigger automounting, I was mistaken.

The mount entry in fstab is as follows:

UUID=<UUID>   /run/media/ntfs-share/        ntfs3            rw,noauto,noatime,x-systemd.automount,x-systemd.idle-timeout=5min,nosuid,nodev,uid=1000,gid=1000,dmask=027,fmask=137   0 0

Is there any way to prevent this from occurring without losing the automount functionality when it is intentional?

Last edited by moririn (2023-05-10 14:12:44)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,292

Re: Prevent Konsole & file managers triggering systemd automount

File managers "need"/want to query information on a file/link so I'd assume that to be normal. FWIW do you have thumbnail generation enabled in dolphin and particularly on your $HOME? Does disabling that have an effect?

moririn

Member

Registered: 2023-05-10

Posts: 3

Re: Prevent Konsole & file managers triggering systemd automount

I feared that to be the case, yes. Thumbnail generation being disabled has no effect on Dolphin (or in Konsole either, for that matter) sadly.

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 77,060

Re: Prevent Konsole & file managers triggering systemd automount

Even if not, dolphin will likely still look for the .directory file inside.
The system doesn't know what's "intentional" - as soon as something looks there, the path gets mounted.

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moririn

Member

Registered: 2023-05-10

Posts: 3

Re: Prevent Konsole & file managers triggering systemd automount

That makes sense - I suppose it's not possible then. Luckily having to resort to the "subdirectory workaround" just means changing a couple environment variables and retraining some muscle memory, so it's not a dealbreaker. Thank you both for your responses.