Re: [Sheflug] ejecting mounted cdroms...

[Alex Hudson <nospam [at] alexhudson.com>]

On 20 Feb 2001 00:29:26 +0000, Barrie Bremner wrote:
> OK - from Alan Cox's site - 2.2.18 release notes:
> 
> IDE CDROM
> [...]Allow root to open the CDROM door at all times.[...]


I think this is a red herring. From looking at the kernel source, door
looking went in in August '95 - along with the ioctl() that 'eject'
relies on to open the door, etc. The 2.2.18 patch above was probably
just a mechanism to allow root to open the door no matter what the
status of NO_DOOR_LOCKING, although I'd have to see the patch to confirm
that. 

I would imagine, given that I've never seen a kernel option in make
*config for this, that it's a source switch - rather like the
'reinitialise timer on animate' switch that I used to get my laptop
clock back in order. So, if you get the vanilla kernel you don't get it
switched on by default, but maybe many of the distributers (SuSE et al)
do switch it on. I've never been able to do it with my machines, AFAIK.



> The 2.2.18 machine will not allow a normal user to eject the cdrom
> whilst mounted with the button - 'eject' umounts and ejects the disk.
> Root can eject a mounted disk with the button.
> 
> However, using 2.4.1 I can as my normal user (baz) eject (using the
> button on the drive) a CDROM I mounted - root can do the same.
> 
> I can't explain why I can eject (with button) as a user.

Could someone please explain the difference to me, in simple terms :),
between pressing the eject button as a user, and pressing the eject
button as root? I'm not quite sure I follow that part.

> I also can't see why Alex gets different behaviour to me, with the
> same kernel (2.4.1).

Sorry, was telling fibs - I run 2.4.1 at work, only 2.4.0 at home. I
shall try this at work and dig a little more, and see what I find out ;)

Cheers,

Alex.
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