HAL

Need option to "Always Mount" a partition

Bug #463717 reported by Matt Wolfgang
88
This bug affects 17 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
GNOME Disks
New
Undecided
Unassigned
HAL
New
Undecided
Unassigned
Nautilus
New
Undecided
Unassigned
One Hundred Papercuts
Invalid
Undecided
Unassigned
gnome-volume-manager
New
Undecided
Unassigned
Ubuntu
Opinion
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

This may not be a bug. It may fall outside of the definition of a paper cut. It also may be by design, but none the less should be considered for change.

When attaching an already formatted hard drive to a system the first partition is automatically mounted, but you always have to manually mount the other partition(s). From the perspective of a user migrating from Windows this is an unnecessary and irritating extra step. Especially if that partition contains frequently accessed data.

Further complicating the issue is the fact that you have to either edit fstab or install another application (like pysadm) to get the partition to auto-mount. This creates a situation where the biggest fear about Linux becomes reality for a lot of users: using the command line.

I think the ideal would be when a partition is mounted for the first time a dialogue box would appear asking if the system should automatically mount this partition in the future. Additionally, it would be nice if you could go to /media, right click on the mount point, go to properties and have a check box that says something like 'Automatically Mount'.

I'm sure there is some 'well though-out' reason for not automatically mounting partitions, (hopefully not the same kind of reasoning that moved the libnotify popups where they interfere with everything) but this is exactly the kind of thing that would make a new user abandon Ubuntu.

Incidentally, when searching for solutions to this on ubuntuforums.org one of the first solutions offered is "why don't you write the code to do this yourself." Not the message we want to send to new users.

Revision history for this message
Maxwell Waters (waters-max) wrote :

Do agree that it needs to be an *option*. I definitely *don't* want all of the other partitions being auto-mounted, but I think the option should be there.

Revision history for this message
JB_1980 (jgilgen) wrote :

I feel the same way. I am not a very experienced user, and one of the things that bothers me about Ubuntu is I always have to mount a separate partition every time I start my computer. I have all my music and themes and stuff on my other drive. I like to have the drive separate so that I can install the new version of Ubuntu every six months. But I get annoyed that every six months I have to install pysadm, which means I have to look it up again on the internet, learn how to install it, then set it up. I don't understand all the intricacies about why you wouldn't want your drive to be auto mounted, but for I what I use my computer for I just want it to with having to download and install stuff. I feel like it should just work.

Revision history for this message
Omer Akram (om26er) wrote :

Thank you for bringing this bug to our attention. However, a paper cut should be a small usability issue , in the default Ubuntu 9.10 install , that affects many people and is quick and easy to fix. So this bug can't be addressed as part of the project.

For further info about papercuts criteria , pls read > https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PaperCut

Don't worry though, This bug has been marked as "invalid" ONLY in the papercuts project.

Changed in hundredpapercuts:
status: New → Invalid
Revision history for this message
Omer Akram (om26er) wrote :

Thank you for your suggestion. However, the changes you are requesting aren't really a bug and require more discussion, which should be done on an appropriate mailing list or forum. http://www.ubuntu.com/support/community/mailinglists might be a good start for determining which mailing list to use.

YannUbuntu (yannubuntu)
summary: - Partitions not Automatically Mounted
+ Need option to "Always Mount" a partition
Revision history for this message
YannUbuntu (yannubuntu) wrote :

Added 4 duplicates :
- No easy way to mount pre-existing partitions after OS installed
- drives are not automatically added to fstab
- Devices don't get mounted automatically
- Partitions should be mounted automatically

I think Nautilus should propose an option to "Always mount"/"Always unmount" a volume (current Mount/Unmount options just operate for the current session), so that the user can choose which volumes he wants to be automatically mounted.

This option could also be added in Palimpsest.

Revision history for this message
YannUbuntu (yannubuntu) wrote :

By the way, I know 2 GUI to manage fstab :
- disk-manager : development is stopped
- pysdm : seems to have problems on Ubuntu 10.04, and doesn't manage UUID

Hope this helps.

Revision history for this message
antistress (antistress) wrote :

Maxwell Waters (c#1) wrote that it needs to be an *option*.
What are the drawbacks of having all partitions automatically mounted ?

Revision history for this message
YannUbuntu (yannubuntu) wrote :

i wonder too : why not automounting all partitions by default and give the user the possibility to select which one he wants to stop automount (via an option in Nautilus or Palimpsest for example) ?

FYI, see also : http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/25576/

Fabio Marconi (fabiomarconi)
Changed in ubuntu:
status: New → Invalid
Revision history for this message
PowerUser (i-am-sergey) wrote :

Why it's "Invalid"? As for me, lack of option to configure mount points after installing system is a major shortcoming, Even ancient WinXP haves disk manager. On Ubuntu user have to resort to editing fstab manually, which is not user friendly at all.

Changed in ubuntu:
status: Invalid → New
Andrew Constantine (andrewmc)
Changed in ubuntu:
status: New → Opinion
Revision history for this message
antistress (antistress) wrote :

Note that disk-manager developpement has resumed https://code.launchpad.net/~givre/disk-manager/trunk

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