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List:       kde-core-devel
Subject:    Re: "Autorun" mechanism in KDE
From:       Andreas Pour <pour () mieterra ! com>
Date:       2002-01-16 22:26:29
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Hetz Ben Hamo wrote:

[ ... ]
 
> One of the question I got often was the issue of auto-running CD's, and I'll
> explain..
> 
> Most distributions today like Red Hat, Mandrake and SuSE (if I'm not
> mistaken) are coming with the supermount feature enabled - which means as
> soon as someone will put a CD in, it will be mounted, and it least with Red
> Hat - when you put the Red Hat CD in - it will run Kpackage, and if it's
> Audio CD - it will run KSCD.

I think they use magicdev for that.

> Now - many developers would like to know if the KDE team is planning (or if
> it's available) a special file format that once the CD is put in the drive -
> this file will run - similar to "autorun" in Windows world.

What's wrong with using "autorun"?  Supposing, I guess, that you want to
make a cross-platform bootable CD?  Probably there should be some
standard for this -- maybe something like "autorun.[OS]", where OS can
be mswindows or unix or macosx or something like that?
 
> Is there a feature like this available in KDE? if not - does someone think to
> implement it?

There used to be "kautorun" for KDE 1
(http://apps.kde.com/nfinfo.php?app=kautorun).  All it takes is for a
daemon (not another one!) to monitor when something is mounted and then
check for a list of files on the CD and, if there, "auto-execute" it (or
maybe ask the user).  

The problem with doing it in KDE is, the distros can easily undo it. 
For example, RedHat uses magicdev (I think), so what chance is there
they will use the "KDE solution"? 

Since autofs/automount already do this, that actually seems to be the
correct place to handle this issue.  That also has the advantage of not
being desktop-specific. 

Another appropriate, though probably slower-moving, place to address
this is the LSB. 

Ciao,

Dre
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