LtspfsVirtualHalDevices

Revision 4 as of 2007-05-10 10:50:49

Clear message

Summary

The current ltspfs implementation bind mounts ltspfs mounted filesystems in /media/$USER and relies on gnomevfs to do the rest of the work like displaying an icon on the desktop and adding the device to the places list. On systems that dont use gnomevfs the user needs to navigate to this dir manually if they dont monitor /media in a differnt way. To improve this functionallity by attacking a lower layer, virtual hal blockdevices should be created and the ltspfs mounting and any further handling of the devices should be left to hal and gnome-mount (or the kde equivalent).

Rationale

  • Eliminates some setuid binaries that need to be maintained.
  • Integrates better with the general HAL/DBUS scheme already existing on the machine

Use Cases

  • Sally plugs in a camera on her thin client, and imports her pictures into F-Spot. She doesn't realize she's not on a regular desktop.
  • Ramone plugs in his USB stick into the thin client in the University lab, and downloads his term paper onto the stick, so he can work on it at home with his Ubuntu desktop.

Scope

  • ltspfs

Design

  • Signal to mount is sent from the client.
  • received by some process running on the server.
  • process iterates over hal-set-property, creating a virtual hal device.
  • hal mounter then takes care of the device.

Implementation

  • We'll have to extend the HAL back end to be aware of ltspfs mount paths.
    • extend hal mounter addon
    • add a property (IP + devicename)
    • probably create a target dir if needed (needs to be checked)
    • delete possible leftovers of the same device before creating it newly
    • backend to compare IP and UID to check the credential/token.

Outstanding Issues

BoF agenda and discussion

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