Ubuntu device management in Arch

josephmc · 2007-01-20 14:55:00

I just recently started using ubuntu on a hard drive i had laying around. I was impressed mostly by the way it handled removable devices. That was only desktop. I just got a dell inspiron 1150 and decided one arch machine was enough to play with so put ubuntu on it. i realized just about the only reason i wanted ubuntu over arch was the way it handle my ipods, video cards, cds, dvds, etc. not to mention the osd when you're changing the volume...that looks like it's straight from ubuntu.

anyway, i'll get to the point. i want to bring this stuff into arch. right now gnome-volume-manager in arch is driving me nuts! sometimes i get a permission denied and sometimes my devices don't show up at all. just wanted to open this up for discussion. i would more more than willing to write a wiki guide if i/we can start figuring out how ubuntu does it all. i want the bleeding egde arch with the ability to use my ipod without opening a terminal.

let me know what you think

edit: meant to say ubuntu not arch. sorry guys! i'm glad some good has come out of my post even if i was very unclear.

pelle.k · 2007-01-20 15:49:11

To test keys from a connected remote control, or extra function keys on your laptop/keyboard, use the command xev in a terminal. make it active by clicking on its window, and try out some keys. You will most probably get the keycodes of those buttons in the terminal window you run xev from.
In my case kecode 176 is the volume up button, so i mapped it with xmodmap.

xmodmap -e "keycode 174 = XF86AudioRaiseVolume"

To use your ipod, shouldn't you install libipoddevice ang libgpod? (this was just a quick search in pacman...)

What other issues do you have?
Are you a member of storage and optical groups? Are you running dbus and hal as daemons?

hacosta · 2007-01-20 20:39:09

i think you can do it..
check out

http://www.mozilla.org/unix/dpi.html

josephmc · 2007-01-22 04:16:06

i guess i wasn't specific enough. i know how to use my ipod with linux. i use gtkpod. gnome does not need an ipod library to mount it. however, in ubuntu when i plug in my ipod it shows up on my desktop with a ipod icon. if i right click on it it gives me the option to eject it. that is very important with ipods. you aren't suppose to unhook them until you eject them. in arch i have to open a terminal and type "eject /dev/ipod". cds and usb drives are just as bad. you have to manually mount them (even if "automatically mount when insterted" is selected in the gnome settings). then you have to unmount them before you can eject them. perhaps this is just me. you really have to had used ubuntu to understand how well it does removable devices. i've setup many arch boxes...i have the permissions setup and stuff it's just the way arch is. it's not made to be easy but in this case i want it to be.

as for the volume thing. i know how to use xev and how to program keys. i wasn't asking how to do that. i was talking about the on screen display ubuntu uses when you change the volume. if you use a dell laptop in windows u would know what i'm talking about. i don't know if this is in gnome by default or what. can anybody confirm this?

as for the last guy...i have NO idea what that link as for...

murffatksig · 2007-01-22 05:18:43

josephmc wrote:

i guess i wasn't specific enough. i know how to use my ipod with linux. i use gtkpod. gnome does not need an ipod library to mount it. however, in ubuntu when i plug in my ipod it shows up on my desktop with a ipod icon.

This is one of the things I like about Arch. I'm forced to actually understand what happens when I plug in my IPod. I think alot of Arch users feel the same way. I've played around with Ubuntu in a VM and its pretty nice. I would say its helping the to put Linux on the desktop. But, in using it, I'm not learning about the Linux kernel. Using Arch has taught me so much.... its fun for me.

Now, having said that, I'm not certain, but I think you can configure Arch to have that functionality.

iphitus · 2007-01-22 05:29:27

josephmc wrote:

I just recently started using arch on a hard drive i had laying around. I was impressed mostly by the way it handled removable devices. That was only desktop. I just got a dell inspiron 1150 and decided one arch machine was enough to play with so put ubuntu on it. i realized just about the only reason i wanted ubuntu over arch was the way it handle my ipods, video cards, cds, dvds, etc. not to mention the osd when you're changing the volume...that looks like it's straight from ubuntu.

Arch does it all too mate.

Gnome Preferences menu > Keyboard Shortcuts > Volume controls.

anyway, i'll get to the point. i want to bring this stuff into arch. right now gnome-volume-manager in arch is driving me nuts! sometimes i get a permission denied and sometimes my devices don't show up at all.

Ensure you're in the right groups, optical and storage, and the correct settings are enabled in the preferences.

just wanted to open this up for discussion. i would more more than willing to write a wiki guide if i/we can start figuring out how ubuntu does it all. i want the bleeding egde arch with the ability to use my ipod without opening a terminal.
let me know what you think

Arch does it all, it's just gotta be configured right. I think our hal might have a minor problem, but it's all installed and there. We use the same libs and everything, but Ubuntu's just comes "preconfigured"

James

lessthanjake · 2007-01-22 11:37:10

To eject stuff you need to install 'eject'. To automaticly mount stuff you need to have gnome-volume-manager running (pgrep -l volume). My Arch installation handles removeable devices just the same as Ubuntu, so it's possible, you just need to push the right buttons

josephmc · 2007-01-22 15:47:17

ok perhaps i'm still not saying this right. i KNOW arch has the same software capabilities as ubuntu. i KNOW what gnome-volume-manger is. i even talked about it. you guys are saying it's just the way it's setup. that's what i mean. i want it to be setup the same. i'm not saying ubuntu is better. i'm saying i know arch is capable i just need to know how to configure it. i know how do to all those thing the hard way but i did them once. i know how to do it. now i want my computer to do it for me.

like i said i didn't know if the osd was part of gnome or not. i guess you didn't read my other post. thanks for confirming it.

i know i'm not making this up. arch is much more difficult out of the box with devices. i know it CAN be as good as ubuntu but the very thing i was proposing was to know HOW to configure it to do those things. i love arch. i'm not saying it's to hard. i've learned so much about linux from it. but it gets old to do everything manually every time

phrakture · 2007-01-22 15:56:05

Hey, I understand you joseph 8)

I use none of this stuff, but I can try and help you out here... can you give me a concise list of ubuntu behavior vs arch behavior, and I can try and point you in the right direction for each specific thing

tomk · 2007-01-22 15:57:31

Arch will never be set up the same as Ubuntu "out of the box", as that's not the way things are done in Arch. That may seem more difficult to you - to others, it is seen as giving them control over their system.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but despite saying "I know how to do it", it seems to me that what you're really looking for is help setting it up. Other users e.g. lessthanjake, have it working, so you can too. If you need help, ask.

Finally, if you believe there are no good docs about Arch, why not write some? The wiki is open to all.

Hmm - I see you edited out the "no good docs" bit.

pelle.k · 2007-01-22 16:10:11

libipoddevice is a device-specific layer for the Apple iPod. libipoddevice provides iPod-specific HAL event notification to applications, and along with objects representing an iPod, which gives the application access to properties and features of an iPod.
libipoddevice also provides a debugging program, ipod to view iPod device properties, listen for iPod HAL events, and safely eject iPods (iPods must be unmounted, then ejected).

Hey, i already told you. You _need_ this to mount/eject your ipod from desktop.
You haven't answered us yet, though...
_Are_ you running dbus/hal? What secondary groups are you a member of?

OK. So what is left to do then? i.e. describe the issues you've still got, very carefully.

Write a bash script or something to set your computer up in 10 seconds if you hate to do it manually everytime you install arch. I have.

josephmc · 2007-01-22 21:08:48

phrakture is the only one who seems to get it. when people hear ubuntu they seem to freak out. I know how differently ubuntu and arch are, trust me. i'll list the specific behavior i'm thinking of and if anybody can tell me how they created this behavior i would be more than grateful.

when i plug in my ipod on ubuntu it mounts it under /media/ipod. i i've thumbed through the ubuntu udev rules and i don't see anything like the rule that is floating around the forums here. when i use that rule i get lots of errors about the special device not existing. i guess gvm doesn't like the simlink to /dev/ipod. however, when i don't use that rule gnome detects it as an ipod just fine and mounts it. it's where it mounts it that i have a problem with. it puts it under whatever you named your ipod. in my case that's joe. so my ipod is mounted under /media/JOE. that's fine. i can point gtkpod to /media/JOE but as soon as somebody brings over their ipod that will change.

also, when i right click on a usbdrive or my ipod in ubuntu it says "eject". i know that this does the same thing as running the eject command. that is not the same thing as unmounting. in arch i only have the option of unmounting devices. in case nobody bothered to read my other posts you have to eject ipods before it says you can remove it. i want to have that eject option.

one more thing. i might be able to research this but just wondering if anybody knows this off the top of their head. i'm on a vaio desktop and it has a recovery partition. is there a way i can make GVM ignore this?

other than that i think udev has improved with updates without me being aware of it. i'm really sorry. i don't think this was a big of a deal as i thought it was. i think it's really just the ipod stuff that bugs me. other than that it's fine. i used to not be able to unplug a removable device without unmounting it first. this could have been before gnome 2.16. i really should have done more research before posting this. my apologies. if anybody can give me tips for my ipod and other usb drives i would be very grateful.

phrakture · 2007-01-22 21:33:07

The point is: he's not complaining. What he is asking is more along the lines of "My ubuntu system does THIS but Arch doesn't - HOW does Ubuntu do it"

It's curiosity, not complaint.
----

On the topic of ubuntu automounting - they probably don't use udev. I'd venture a guess they use some sort of hal magic to do that.

As for the "eject" thing, it sounds like something gnome related. Somehow the ipod is getting marked as "removable" - again this may be related to hal.

You are running hal on your arch box, right?

josephmc · 2007-01-22 21:59:45

phrakture u nailed it. thanks alot. i thank everybody else for trying to help.

i'm using the normal setup. dbus>hal>gnome-volume-manager. yeah ubuntu does use udev and hal but i'm not sure where all those "tricks" come from. it think you maybe be on to something with hal. i'll poke around in ubuntu and see what i can come up with. i wouldn't be suprised if it has to do w/ ubuntu editing gnome source code.

josephmc · 2007-01-22 22:38:32

found this. thought it was interesting.

http://gnomesupport.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=11245
apparently it IS a ubuntu patch.

http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/m … u7.diff.gz
searching for "eject" in that patch file has some interesting results. notice there is one to notify if a device is ripped out w/o ejecting. i was putting in usb drives and pulling them out on both machines and noticed this on my ubuntu laptop. it does a libnotify popup that says you took it out unsafely.

edit: found the exact text when you rip out a drive "To avoid serious data loss, disable removable drives with the "Eject" option in the drive icon's context menu on the desktop, Computer place, or drive applet."

edit: ok...still researching and i thought this was interesting.
"You cannot eject media from a motorized drive when the media is mounted. " from http://www.gnome.org/learn/users-guide/2.4/ch07s08.html

that leads me to think ubuntu has a workaround that unmounts the drive THEN ejects it. they're saying if you need to eject a device you have to do it "manually" this is what i'm trying to overcome.

pelle.k · 2007-01-22 23:46:55

I found two articles, which might be of some interest.
http://www.kgarner.com/blog/archives/20 … -hal-ipod/
http://mythic-beasts.com/~mark/random/hal/

This is some cool stuff you can do with udev/hal
What about a simple approach like a "user" line in fstab? You already know it's @ /dev/ipod

chaosgeisterchen · 2007-01-23 09:54:37

I hope not to have something misuderstood, but concerning automounting I never really had problems under Arch. External hard drives, pendrives, external card readers and my iPod nano 2G are autodetected and automounted if I wish so.

What's the magic behind it? I do not know really, but that's the job, dbus and hal are doing for me. I use KDE, I have to admit, and it worked like a charm for me, so far, apart from one time, when automounting seemed to be messed up all by myself. Restoring defaults solved it for me.

Kubuntu was all equal concerning removable media.

So I think KDE is superior in this respect?

josephmc · 2007-01-23 21:01:51

kde uses kio. i don't like kio. it's really annoying and hard to configure with non kde aware programs. however if you use all kde apps it works just fine :-). maybe i'm wrong but that's how i remember kde when i used it around 3.3 something

ok i used a sort of mixture from the two links that pelle gave me and got my mount point fixed! i've been looking for ways to do this in udev for the longest time. it finally works!

i think most of the device support in ubuntu is done in hal. they have many more config parameters than arch. ubuntu has this hal patch
http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/m … 17.diff.gz

what they have is a 10-storage-policy.fdi file in /usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/10osvendor. i was looking through it and there is some really useful stuff. they define a whole bunch of mount points and define hard hardrives by their volume label. ( would be glade to paste the whole thing if anybody is interested). one of them is for the ipod

          <!-- Attempt mount point 'ipod' for iPod's -->
          <match key="@block.storage_device:portable_audio_player.type" string="ipod">
            <merge key="volume.policy.desired_mount_point" type="string">ipod</merge>
          </match>

i just made file called ipod.fdi in /etc/hal/fdi/policy that has this in it:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?> <!-- -*- SGML -*- -->
<deviceinfo version="0.2">

  <device>
    <match key="@block.storage_device:storage.model" string="iPod">
      <merge key="volume.policy.desired_mount_point" type="string">ipod</merge>
      <merge key="volume.policy.mount_option.iocharset=iso8859-15" type="bool">true</merge>
      <merge key="volume.policy.mount_option.sync" type="bool">true</merge>
    </match>
  </device>
</deviceinfo>

when i click unmount now it actually ejects the ipod. i think this might have to do with the sync mount option defined above. needless to say i'm happy and i'll be playing with hal much more!

some really intresting stuff. i don't think the arch community should be so arrogant about having so much control that we can't learn how to set this kind of stuff up. i know i'm not the only one curious. if you aren't then don't mind this. keep using fluxbox and manually mount your drives. wont' hurt my feelings.

Snarkout · 2007-01-23 23:13:31

FWIW, part of the problem is that you never really explained what you had actually done or how your system was setup - you only pointed out that arch and ubuntu differ in a way you don't care for. Hell, you didn't even give us any logs to chew on. In general, if people aren't answering your questions right, you might examine how/what you're really asking. Being vague doesn't help. Saying "you don't get it. I KNOW what I'm doing!" without providing specifics isn't going to help either. Most folks here are generally very happy to answer questions, but you have to actually ask a specific question. I don't think there are very many folks here who know, piece by piece, the differences between ubuntu and arch.

Personally, I get tired of the "U use ubuntu? arch makes u smartr!" attitude too, but honestly I also have a hard time with "Ubuntu does x, arch doesnt. WTF???" stuff as well.

phrakture · 2007-01-24 00:10:21

For the love of god... try re-reading the thread, but instead read only what I wrote and the direct responses to me.... sheesh people.

Dusty · 2007-01-24 00:15:58

Yeah, I think you guys are being kind of harsh on this guy, he's actually asked a legitimate question and worked to figure it out. I can name a half dozen others you can attack for n00bish behaviour if you like.

Dusty

Snarkout · 2007-01-24 01:04:01

I'm certainly not trying to attack anyone. I was simply pointing out that vague questions are difficult to answer, or that at least I found his questions too vague to give any useful answers to.

josephmc · 2007-01-24 06:16:22

i'm not new to linux but perhaps i am new to explaining things on forums. i'm sorry YET again (i guess the first time wasn't enough to keep people from chewing me out).

any thoughts on what i found? anybody think it would b worth a wiki entry? maybe a hal section?

Mr Green · 2007-01-24 07:20:25

Well I for one would like to see wiki page on hal... as a non use of Gnome & Kde desktop it would be handy to have things just work out of the box [I am getting lazy in my old age!]

pmount is my friend

@josephmc let me know if you need any help with wiki page ;-)

Misfit138 · 2007-01-24 13:54:20

I use KDE, and have my iPod automounting with an icon on the desktop, and it started working right when I abandoned udev rules and fstab entries!
Which, is to say, just by me plugging it in, hal ( I think) is working its magic.
If you gather your thoughts about exactly how to get yours set up "just so", then stick it in the wiki! I think the wiki is generally lacking in the iPod department, and could use an entry for what you are doing.

Arch Linux

#1 2007-01-20 14:55:00

Ubuntu device management in Arch

#2 2007-01-20 15:49:11

Re: Ubuntu device management in Arch

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Re: Ubuntu device management in Arch

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Re: Ubuntu device management in Arch

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