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disk/misc/AutoMounter.lha

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Short:AutoMount tool for any changeable disk drive
Author:tboeckel at uni-paderborn.de (Thore Boeckelmann)
Uploader:tboeckel uni-paderborn de (Thore Boeckelmann)
Type:disk/misc
Architecture:m68k-amigaos
Date:2002-10-13
Download:http://aminet.net/disk/misc/AutoMounter.lha - View contents
Readme:http://aminet.net/disk/misc/AutoMounter.readme
Downloads:7660

TITLE
  AutoMounter


VERSION
  37.4


AUTHOR
  Thore Böckelmann <tboeckel at uni-paderborn.de>


REQUIREMENTS
  Any Amiga® (compatible) computer with at least OS2.04 and 68020+ cpu.


DESCRIPTION
  Did you ever have the problem, that you had several Zip® disks, each of them
  probably formatted or partitioned differently with different filesystems like
  FFS, SFS, PFS, CrossDOS, etc? And each time you change the disk you had to
  mount another device driver to access the disk? Wouldn't it be much easier
  just to insert the disk and let the Amiga automatically mount the new driver
  if necessary?
  Or do you have a disk drive, that cannot be accessed during booting, so that
  you have to mount the drive "by hand" using a mountfile?
  AutoMounter does exactly all these things. It will monitor any drive you
  configure for disk changes. Every time you insert a disk in one of these
  drives AutoMounter will check if the disk matches any of the already mounted
  devices in the system, and if this check fails it will try to mount it. It
  doesn't matter if the disk uses a filesystem you didn't use before, because
  AutoMounter will try to read the disk's RDB and load the desired filesystem
  from there. This also works for MS-DOS formatted disks, which have no RDB, but
  it requires either CrossDOS or FAT95.
  Please note that the CrossDOS/FAT95 support is very simple. Things like
  partitions in extended partitions and similar things are not supported. I
  think there is no need for such things because of two reasons:
    1. most changeable media are Zip disks, which only have one partition
    2. AutoMounter is no filesystem, just a little tool doing a job in the
       background.
  If you really ever have a disk with several partitions of which not all can be
  mounted by AutoMounter, then please contact me and I will try to change that.

  A hint for IOBlix/VarIO users:
  There is no need to specify the device entries in the tooltypes of AutoMounter
  for parallel port Zip drives connected to the IOBlix/VarIO as long as you
  start SetupIOBlix/SetupVarIO with the AUTOMOUNT option. IOBlix'/VarIO's
  AutoMount.demon will use AutoMounter as soon as it is running. Without the
  AutoMount.demon you will of course have to handle the drives connected to the
  IOBlix/VarIO like any other device.


USAGE
  You can start AutoMounter from either Workbench or Shell with the following
  options, although Workbench is more suitable:

  POLLTIMEOUT/K/N,FAT95/S,DEVICE/M

  POLLTIMEOUT/K/N: set the timeout (in seconds) for polling ancient drivers for
    disk changes. Default value is 5 seconds.

  FAT95/S: use L:fat95 instead of L:CrossDOSFileSystem for MS-DOS formatted
    disks. This is necessary, because the version of CrossDOS delivered with
    AmigaOS 2.04+ doesn't support long filenames, but not everybody has FAT95
    installed. So if you have MS-DOS formatted disk, but you don't own the
    commercial version of CrossDOS (V6.x, V7.x), then set this option to use
    FAT95.

  DEVICE/M: set a device to be monitored for disk changes. Each device entry
    must be given using the following template:

    DEVICE/A,UNIT/A/N,MAXTRANSFER=MT/K,DEFFATNAME,POLL/S

    DEVICE/A: Exec style device name of the device to be monitored

    UNIT/A/N: unit number of the device

    MAXTRANSFER=MT/K: some devices don't like the standard value 0x00ffffff
      for MaxTransfer. If you notice any problems then use this option. The
      value must be given in hexadecimal notation, starting with "0x". Some
      IDE/ATAPI drives will choke for other MaxTransfer values than 0x0001fe00.
      Default value is 0x00ffffff.

    DEFFATNAME: MS-DOS formatted disks don't have an RDB, so they cannot tell
      AutoMounter the name under which the drive should be mounted. This option
      only affects MS-DOS formatted disks and has no meaning for Amiga formatted
      disk with RDB. This name defaults to "FATC".
      Note: This name must *NOT* include a trailing ":"!!

    POLL/S: use this option for those device drivers, that don't support disk
      change notification. These drivers will be asked every <POLLTIMEOUT>
      seconds for a disk change. This option should only be used if disk
      changes are not noticed automatically.

    Examples:
      DEVICE=cybppc.device 2
      Monitor cybppc.device unit 2 (my Zip drive) for disk changes.

      DEVICE=cybppc.device 2 ZIPC
      Monitor cybppc.device unit 2 for disk changes, but use ZIPC as drive name
      for MS-DOS formatted disks. Usage of fat95 instead of CrossDOSFileSystem
      for MS-DOS formatted disks depends on the global flag <FAT95>.

      DEVICE=very_ancient.device 0 FAT poll
      Monitor very_ancient.device unit 0 for disk changes, use FAT as drive name
      for MS-DOS formatted disks. Because very_ancient.device doesn't support
      disk change interrupts, poll it every 5 seconds for a disk change. Usage
      of fat95 instead of CrossDOSFileSystem for MS-DOS formatted disks depends
      on the global flag <FAT95>.

  If you start AutoMounter from Shell you must surround every DEVICE
  specification with quotes ("), because of the spaces in the specification
  (e.g. AutoMounter "dev1.device 0" "dev2.device 4 poll")

  For the case you have two disks with different geometry, but with the same
  device name in the RDB (for example two ZIP disks) AutoMounter will change the
  name of the newly mounted device that it is unique in the system. That means
  it will append ".0", ".1", ".2", etc to the RDB-saved device name, until the
  device name is unique. You will have two different DOS-devices afterwards for
  the same disk drive, but you will be able to access both disks without the
  need of a remount tool like SCSIMounter or Mounter (supplied with OS3.5/3.9).
  Additionally this behaviour is much safer than unmounting the old drive.

  You can start and quit AutoMounter at any time. To quit AutoMounter simply
  start it a second time.

  Additionally there are three support tools for AutoMounter: AddAutoDevice,
  RemAutoDevice and ListAutoDevices. With the first two tools you can
  dynamically add or remove a device from disk change monitoring.

  The usage template for AddAutoDevice is the same as for every DEVICE tooltype
  of AutoMounter. AddAutoDevice will print the result of adding the device for
  monitoring, either success or failure.

  RemAutoDevice just needs the device name and the unit number to remove from
  monitoring. RemAutoDevice will print the result of removing the device from
  monitoring, either success or failure.

  ListAutoDevices will print a list of all currently monitored devices.


INSTALLATION
  Copy AutoMounter where ever you want, but SYS:WBStartup is a very good place.


KNOWN BUGS
  - cybppc.device seems to tend to crash after removing a device from
    monitoring and changing the disk afterwards. I don't know why this happens
    and if this applies for all of phase5's devices. But I think this not a real
    problem, since all of phase5's devices have a built-in mounter, so there
    should be no real need to run AutoMounter on these devices.
  - 1230scsi.device (Blizzard 1230/1240/1260 SCSI module) doesn't increment its
    diskchange counter. AutoMounter isn't affected by this anymore (V37.2), but
    of course this is a serious bug in phase5's device drivers!


HISTORY
  37.1 (21.01.2001):
    - initial Aminet release

  37.2 (12.02.2001):
    - devices and units are now checked if they are changable media. Drives like
      harddisks or CD-ROMs will be rejected, because they are either not
      changable or they will never contain a valid RDB.
    - recognition of MS-DOS formatted disks is much better now. MBR and
      partition table are now searched for valid entries before trying to mount
      a new device.
    - new option FAT95 now enables support for fat95 filesystem instead of
      CrossDOS.
    - ListAutoDevices contained a wrong version string. Damn quick hacking :)
    - drivers that need polling to detect a disk change will now get a command
      sequence that is similar to the shell command DiskChange to make them
      recognize the new disk.
    - MaxTransfer value can be set now, in case some stupid device drivers
      cannot handle transfers >=128K.
    - mounting FAT formatted disks was completely broken and caused immediate
      crashes. This is fixed now, CrossDOS and FAT95 are fully supported now.

  37.3 (23.08.2001):
    - a device driver would have been opened over and over again when the disk
      geometry could not be determinded for some reason. This is fixed now. Even
      empty drives are monitored correctly now.
    - IOBlix users should also replace the AutoMount.demon, because the old one
      (37.17) just checked for AutoMounter 37.2, but not for newers releases.

  37.4 (10.10.2002):
    - AutoMounter now tries to RemDevice() then device upon closure.
    - if the newly inserted disk used a FileSystem that was not yet used by
      any other device and delivered this FileSystem in its RDB the FileSystem
      was never found. Fixed! (Chris Hodges <chrisly at platon42.de>)


COPYRIGHT AND DISCLAIMER
  AutoMounter is copyrighted 2001,2002 by Thore Böckelmann.
  All rights reserved. This program is freeware, so no financial donations  
  required. Redistribution allowed if the package is left unchanged. The author
  is not responsible for any damage caused by the use or misuse of this
  documentation and/or the program(s) it describes.

  AutoMounter uses the SmartReadArgs package by Thomas Aglassinger.
  fat95 is (c)opyright by Torsten Jager <t.jager at gmx.de>


Contents of disk/misc/AutoMounter.lha
 PERMSSN    UID  GID    PACKED    SIZE  RATIO     CRC       STAMP          NAME
---------- ----------- ------- ------- ------ ---------- ------------ -------------
[unknown]                 1541    2200  70.0% -lh5- 3651 Oct 10  2002 AddAutoDevice
[unknown]                 1903    3136  60.7% -lh5- 88fa Oct 10  2002 AutoMount.demon
[unknown]                11914   20004  59.6% -lh5- 3b10 Oct 10  2002 AutoMounter
[unknown]                 1583    2275  69.6% -lh5- 23e3 Oct 10  2002 AutoMounter.info
[unknown]                 4056    9847  41.2% -lh5- 4f24 Oct 10  2002 AutoMounter.readme
[unknown]                 1400    1956  71.6% -lh5- e5e4 Oct 10  2002 ListAutoDevices
[unknown]                 1379    1948  70.8% -lh5- 6e4b Oct 10  2002 RemAutoDevice
---------- ----------- ------- ------- ------ ---------- ------------ -------------
 Total         7 files   23776   41366  57.5%            Oct 13  2002

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