[ltp] "supermount" bad

[M. Leo Cooper]

The "supermount" command, which automatically detects discs inserted or
removed from a CD ROM drive (or floppy drive) is more trouble than it's worth
on some laptop models.

On a "single spindle" model, such as the 760EL/XL, you can have either the CD
ROM drive attached or the floppy, but not both (unless you have an external
floppy kit). Unfortunately, if "supermount" is specified in /etc/fstab, then
the system tries to detect and mount both drives at startup and unmount them
at shutdown. This causes delays and error messages. In addition, "supermount"
breaks the very useful "df" command, as it forces detecting uninstalled
hardware.

If you have a "single spindle" model TP, my strong recommendation is to
edit /etc/fstab to remove "supermount".

There will be a line similar this in /etc/fstab:

/mnt/floppy /mnt/floppy supermount fs=vfat,dev=/dev/fd0 0 0

Change this to:

/dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy ext2 user,noauto 0 0


Make the corresponding changes for /mnt/cdrom, in case you have the floppy
drive connected and the CD ROM removed.


The purpose of "supermount", as I understand it, was to make happy Windows
users switching to Linux, so they did not have to manually issue a "mount" or
"umount" command when inserting or removing discs. Unfortunately, this is one
case of the cure being worse than the disease, especially on certain TP
models.




Mendel



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