Mounting CD-ROMs and Floppy Disks from the Desktop

Desktop icons are created for your CD-ROMs and floppies when Red Hat installed KDE. To access a CD-ROM disk, place the CD-ROM disk in your CD-ROM drive and double-click the CD-ROM icon. The file manager window then opens, displaying the contents of the CD-ROM's top-level directory. To eject the CD, right-click the CD-ROM's icon and select Eject from the pop-up menu (you can also elect to just unmount the CD-ROM). To access a floppy disk, you can perform a similar operation using the Floppy Disk icon. Place the floppy disk in the disk drive and double-click the Floppy Disk icon. This displays a file manager window with the contents of the floppy disk. Be careful not to remove the disk unless you first unmount it. To unmount the disk, right-click its icon and select Unmount from the icon's pop-up menu. You can perform one added operation with floppy disks. If you put in a blank disk, you can format it. You can choose from several file system formats, including MS-DOS. To format a standard Linux file system, select the ext3 entry.

A desktop file you use for your CD-ROM is a special kind of desktop file designed for file system devices. If you add a new CD-ROM or floppy drive, you can create a new desktop file for it to enable you to access the drive from your desktop. To create one, first right-click anywhere on the desktop, select Create New, and then select either CD-ROM Device for a CD-ROM drive or Floppy Device for a floppy drive. This opens a Properties window with tabs for General, Permissions, Device, and Meta Info. In the General tab, you can set the name for the device icon that will appear on the desktop as well as choose the icon you want to show for a mounted CD-ROM or floppy disk (a default is already provided). On the Device panel, you select the actual device by selecting its mount point on your file system, like /mnt/cdrom. The CD-ROM desktop file assumes that a CD-ROM entry for the CD-ROM device has already been placed in the /etc/fstab file (see Chapter 30). You can also choose the icon used to indicate when it is unmounted. On the Permissions panel, you can also indicate the permissions that have been set to allow access to the device. See the chapter on file administration, Chapter 30, for a discussion on devices and file systems. The desktop file does not perform the necessary system administration operations that enable access to the CD-ROM by ordinary users. Normally, only the systems administrator (root user) can mount or unmount CD-ROMs and floppy disks, unless permission is given to users. You also must make sure an entry is in the /etc/fstab file for the CD-ROM or floppy drive. If not, you have to add one. Check Chapter 30 for the procedures to use.