Gimme a button to unmount

[ptosch]

Hello,

I regularly have to unmount my external 500GB USB-harddisk before I can pull it out safely. This means I must switch on my notebook, login with ssh onto the sheevaplug, unmount and shut down the notebook.
I want the Sheevaplug to have a button so I just have to push this button, the harddrive gets unmounted and I can pull it out safely. Unfortunately there is no such button .

Anyone here who maybe solved it another way ? Is there a possibility to reconfigure the reset button ?

Any help is appreciated !

Regards,
  Peter

[MarkF]

Someone replied in another thread with this information.  I thought it might be helpful to you.

With one or more of these, and some software, you could use it/them for what ever you'd like.  Of course you'd need a USB hub for both your drive and this device; however, you might be able to use a non-powered one, if that is a concern.

Shiny Devices provides a single key USB "keyboard" (http://shinydevices.com/products/keystroke-diy)

[ptosch]

Thanks for the answer, but I won´t spend that much money for just one button, thats ridiculous. I think I will try using  the console port for transmitting a signal to the sheevaplug. Unfortunately I don´t know where to start.
Greetings,
 Peter

[theblop]

I regularly have to unmount my external 500GB USB-harddisk before I can pull it out safely. This means I must switch on my notebook, login with ssh onto the sheevaplug, unmount and shut down the notebook.
I want the Sheevaplug to have a button so I just have to push this button, the harddrive gets unmounted and I can pull it out safely. Unfortunately there is no such button .

Anyone here who maybe solved it another way ? Is there a possibility to reconfigure the reset button ?

Any help is appreciated !

Regards,
  Peter

Maybe auto-mounting/unmounting your USB drive with autofs would help?

More info here: http://wiki.debian.org/AutoFs

[ptosch]

Maybe auto-mounting/unmounting your USB drive with autofs would help?

More info here: http://wiki.debian.org/AutoFs

[/quote]

I already use autofs for automounting.

Besides I find the unmount feature in autofs pretty insecure. The manual says, the HDD gets unmounted when it´s not used. So before I plug off the USB-HDD I must know if it is already in mounted or unmounted state;

Now that is a point I didn't consider: I must have something like a feedback from the plug if the unmount procedure has succeeded (sometimes it is not possible to unmount a HDD). I think flashing one of the LEDs would be the right thing...

So it should look like: press button to unmount; wait some secs; if the blue LED is blinking longer than 5 seconds the unmount procedure succeeded; the USB-HDD can be now removed from the USB port.

Regards,
Peter

[monkeyhybrid]

Two or three user-customisable buttons, and one for power on / graceful shutdown would be nice. Along with user-customisable LEDs.

[theblop]

I don't know if you can do that with autofs, but maybe it's possible to call an external script when the drive is auto-unmounted. This script could change the LED to report the drive mount status.
Or if you're not in a hurry you could run that script from a cronjob every minute (not great but cheaper than a hardware solution)

Another possibility: what about plugging in a cheap USB mouse (you'll need a USB hub too of course) and map one of the buttons to call the unmount+LED check script? I have no idea how you can remap mouse buttons to call a program without being logged in but it's probably possible without too much hacking...

I already use autofs for automounting.

Besides I find the unmount feature in autofs pretty insecure. The manual says, the HDD gets unmounted when it´s not used. So before I plug off the USB-HDD I must know if it is already in mounted or unmounted state;

Now that is a point I didn't consider: I must have something like a feedback from the plug if the unmount procedure has succeeded (sometimes it is not possible to unmount a HDD). I think flashing one of the LEDs would be the right thing...

So it should look like: press button to unmount; wait some secs; if the blue LED is blinking longer than 5 seconds the unmount procedure succeeded; the USB-HDD can be now removed from the USB port.

Regards,
Peter

[diarmuidw]

Just add a cheapo keyboard and set up some simple scripts that run off commands like "gimme"

alias "gimme=umount /dev/sda1"

Cheers

Diarmuid

edit. Of course you will have to log in blind first!!!