Even More Ways to Reduce Removable Media Headaches in Linux

In this concluding part of the series I will show you how to allow others to connect to your media as well as a few other neat tricks.

Most people don’t know that there’s a command to eject CDs from the CD drive. Naturally, this isn’t an issue for those who have tray CD drives. But for those with slot-loading CD drives, eject will save you from pulling your hair out. After you have used and unmounted your CD drive, open up a terminal and enter the eject command, and your CD will pop out. To simplify the process, make a menu entry for the command.

If you’re unsure what devices are mounted on your system, issue the mount command to see a listing of everything currently mounted on your machine. The output looks like:

/dev/sda1 on / type ext3 (rw)

none on /proc type proc (rw)

/dev/sda6 on /home type ext3 (rw)

none on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw)

none on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw)

From this output, I can see that I have no removable media mounted on the machine. So I know it’s safe to unplug anything removable. Had there been an entry for, say, my iPod, I would know not to remove the device without unmounting it. Of course, on modern systems (using one of the major desktops), this will be made clear with the icon or the removable device applet on the panel. But this command will be helpful (along with dmesg) in debugging removable media issues.

If you’ve tried to add songs on a Mac-formatted iPod on Linux, you’ve probably discovered that it’s not possible without jumping through hoops even programmers don’t want to jump through. Format your iPod in Windows format, and you won’t have any problems using your iPod with Amarok, Banshee, or gtkpod.

In my office, I have a removable drive mounted to /media/music that contains my entire music collection. I allow others to listen to that music via samba by including it as a share. I like doing this far better than allowing users to have access to my internal drive because 1) it keeps anyone from trashing the drive containing my OS and 2) it allows me to keep sensitive data physically separated from shared data. This approach doesn’t have to be used for music, either. It’s a great way to share interoffice files or have a single repository for backups. Once the drive is full, remove it and store it. Just add a new removable drive for the new backup.

Simpler, easier

Not only is today’s Linux not nearly as challenged with removable media as it once was, it’s really quite flexible and user friendly. With the help of these tips, you should now see how you can expand your Linux experience to include various ways to employ removable media.