Package: pmount Version: 0.8-2 Severity: wishlist hi there
it would be nice if pmount had an option -r for mounting a device readonly, as is done with 'mount' Discussion of pros: mounting a device readonly is good since it avoids any writes on it, such as updating of atime (for which though there is the option -A) and of the superblock (that is otherwise marked as dirty); avoiding writes is good since AFAIK there is only a limited number of writes that are allowed on a flash usb drive (and we do not want to exaust all available writes on the superblock, more than any other thing). When mounting readonly, moreover, it is safe if someone forgets to unmount before removing the USB drive ; and the drive can be unmounted even if it was removed , with no damaging whatsover .... ... ok ... I am not completely sure of this last item, but I tried it and it seems to work, as follows: [plug device] # mount -o ro /dev/sda2 /mnt [unplug device] # umount /mnt [replug device, wait for udev to create it] # fsck /dev/sda2 fsck 1.37 (21-Mar-2005) e2fsck 1.37 (21-Mar-2005) /dev/sda2: clean, 80/8480 files, 7899/33872 blocks whereas if you do the same with '-o rw' , in the last step you get # fsck /dev/sda2 fsck 1.37 (21-Mar-2005) e2fsck 1.37 (21-Mar-2005) /dev/sda2: recovering journal /dev/sda2: clean, 80/8480 files, 7899/33872 blocks a. -- System Information: Debian Release: 3.1 Architecture: i386 (i686) Kernel: Linux 2.6.12-1-k7 Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C (charmap=ANSI_X3.4-1968) Versions of packages pmount depends on: ii dbus-1 0.23.4-1 simple interprocess messaging syst ii libc6 2.3.5-6 GNU C Library: Shared libraries an ii libhal0 0.4.7-3sarge1 Hardware Abstraction Layer - share ii libsysfs1 1.2.0-5 interface library to sysfs -- no debconf information -- Andrea Mennucc "Ukn ow,Ifina llyfixe dmysp acebar.ohwh atthef"
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