[Wine]Softlinking to a dvd-drive with inconsistent mount points? => HAL-Support

[wino at piments.com]

On Sat, 27 Aug 2005 21:57:06 +0200, Detlef Riekenberg <wine.dev at web.de>  
wrote:

> Am Freitag, den 26.08.2005, 12:50 +0200 schrieb Holly Bostick:
>
>>> Problem solved:
>> >>http://portal.suse.com/sdb/en/2005/05/dkukawka_hal_mountpoints.html
>
>> > Thanks Hiji, that was useful for me too.
>
> Thats an ugly workaround that should be forbidden. See Below.
>
>> > It might be nice to be able to symlink "d::" to /dev/hdc
>> > and have wine figure out where that's mounted,
>> > instead of having to specify both the device and the mount point.
>
> IMHO thats the only possible Way and wine must go that Way ASAP!
> (and use the old method for systems, where the new way dis not work)
>
>
>> Of course ~/.wine/drive_c  (or wherever it's placed since Wine now
>> allows you to place the wine directory on first run), is going to
>> automatically be C:\.
>
> This is the default Location used by "wineprefixcreate"
>
>> The user's $HOME directory,
>>
>> is automatically symlinked to D:\
>
> "D:\" is not created by "wineprefixcreate".
>
>> /tmp, ..., is automatically symlinked to E:\, which Wine seems to
>
> "e:\" is not created by "wineprefixcreate".
> "c:\windows\temp" is used as the default Temporary Directory.
>
>> C:\Windows\temp, where it always is under Windows)
>
> This is the default Location in win9x, if "TEMP" is not set in
> "config.sys" or "autoexec.bat" when starting this DOS-Taskswitcher.
>
> %USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Temp" is the default for W2k and above.
> (Replace the second Part with the Translation in your Language).
> (WinNT 4.0 is
>
> The actual Location is always found in "TEMP"
>
>> / , being the third of the necessary directories that everyone is known
>> to have, is automatically symlinked to Z:\
>
> This is also created by "wineprefixcreate"
>
>
>> I honestly don't know what SuSE was thinking with that one-- what
>> earthly reason could the majority of users have to need their CD/DVD
>> mounted to the label of the media itself? Yeah, I want /media/Far Cry
>> one minute, and /media/Office 2003 the next. Like I even know the LABEL
>> of most of the media I mount (and that's just retail disks, nothing said
>> about backup disks or other self-burned media). So how am I supposed to
>> know where it is, if I don't know the label?
>
> That's the best thing they did, but many Years to late!
>
> I used this semantic since 1985 when the computers had one or two
> floppy-disks, the hd was optional with a size about 40MB and was very
> surprised, when i changed my system.
>
> When a different medium (Disk) was needed and not present, the first
> system asks:
> 'Please insert Volume "Application, Disk 2" in any Drive'.
> The system detected the Media-Change and closed the Requester automatic,
> no matter in which Drive you inserted the Disk
> (DF0:, DF1: DF2 or DF3: for Floppy-Disks).
> Even the Requester was created automatic, when the required medium was
> not found and the Application did not forbid this behaviour explicit.
>
> About 20 Years later in 1994, a different System told me to insert the
> "Installation CD #2" in drive "E:" and was unable to detect, that the
> required medium was already present in drive "F:".
>
> Thats the way: The software-vendors are inflexible and the users do not
> complain.
>
> The First system was my Amiga and the second was the Software "WISO
> Sparbuch 2004" on Windows 2000.
>
>
> So with the HAL-System, linux is on the right way.
> Please do not be fixed on the old style, be flexible.
>
> Software need to use "/media/LABEL_OF_THE_MEDIA" to be more flexible,
> but that do not work, if the user create that ugly workaround above.
>
>> I could maybe see it for USB sticks, or Flash cards,
>> but those are different rules than the ones for CD/DVD drives.
>
> Which rules?
> Why use different behaviour?
> They are all media!
>
> Even Linux can use the semantic with the Volume-Label.
> No matter, on which Harddisk or which Partition the Files are.
> Mount find the Label.
>
>> And I don't even like this /media thing anyway; half
>> the time I start typing ls -la /mnt/wherever and get nothing (of
>> course). Phooey.
>
> Thats the Problem. The change was very late and many user must learn the
> flexible way.
>
>
> IMHO, it's required for wine to handle the HAL-Message-System ASAP.
>
>

Yuck!

It does not surprise me at all that SuSE has gone that way , it is trying  
to be a semi-free, semi-open source windows replica. And for better and  
for worse is going a long way to achieving that aim.

This sort of thing sucks (incidentally "suse" is french for suck ... in  
every sense of the term!).

I dont think it is old-fashioned or inflexible to expect a cdrom I put in  
my cd drive to end up at /mnt/cdrom . It makes more sense than  
"/media/Some dumb, long name with spaces and/or commas (c)2005  
Beetlejuice-inc.com" .


I can be expected to know whether I put my medium in the CD drive or the  
USB port. I may not know the volume names of all the possible "flexible"  
media mounted in CDs DVDs USBs Bluetooth devices and God knows what else  
at any given time and I see no utility in having to type ls /media and  
start guessing.


Your Amiga example is fine, asking for the second of a pair of production  
disks by name is helpful and the critisism of win2k not finding the CD in  
F: is valid. But all that has nothing to do creating rediculous pathnames  
which will inevitably not fit into any message box or space allowed for  
file name display. You will end up having to scroll around , resize  
everything and even then you will probably be missing the filename cos it  
got chopped off.

Basically it's a mess. Give me /mnt/dvd anyday, and keep gatesisms out of  
Linux.

I get the feeling I am soon going to hate suse as much as XP. (well, OK,  
not quite. It does have its good points!)

Thanks for the link to the xml hack, it may come in useful one day.