Where would you suggest a feature be added to the default install, such as a right-hand mouse click option to format, say, USB drives within the system. It would be nice to format them quickly…yes, like in Windows!
Can you please explain a bit more about what you want. At least I do not understand what you say. Specialy mentioning Windows does not help as I do not know very much about Windows.
“Formatting” (that is creating a file system on a mass storage container like a partition, a logical volume or the like) is not different for different underlying hardware. Thus it is not different for a partition on a revolving disk on a PCI bus, or a sticky on an USB (or another mutation of those storage/bus combinatiions). You can e.g. do it using YaST > System > Partitioning, or with the CLII commands from the mkfs set.
I don’t think that most people want this. If it is something you need, why not set it up yourself?
One way to do this… I am assuming KDE.
Right click on the device notifier in the task panel, and select device notifier settings, and set what you want to happen in device actions.
On 2014-01-11 16:56, wakou wrote:
>
> I don’t think that most people want this. If it is something you need,
> why not set it up yourself?
> One way to do this… I am assuming KDE.
>
> Right click on the device notifier in the task panel, and select device
> notifier settings, and set what you want to happen in device actions.
All those things are complicated, and anyway, require root permissions.
Not very long ago, there were GUI applications on the menu to just quick
format a floppy. The application automatically found the floppy to do it.
What the OP wants, I guess, is just such a quick and safe application to
do it, as user. I don’t know of any such thing.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)
Am 11.01.2014 21:53, schrieb Carlos E. R.:
> What the OP wants, I guess, is just such a quick and safe application to
> do it, as user. I don’t know of any such thing.
>
quick-usb-formatter
I had to add myself to the disk group when I first installed it to avoid
running it as root. I have not tested it on 13.1, but I see it is still
available.
–
PC: oS 13.1 x86_64 | i7-2600@3.40GHz | 16GB | KDE 4.11 | GTX 650 Ti
ThinkPad E320: oS 13.1 x86_64 | i3@2.30GHz | 8GB | KDE 4.11 | HD 3000
HTPC: oS 13.1 x86_64 | Celeron@1.8GHz | 2GB | Gnome 3.10 | HD 2500
On 2014-01-12 00:03, Martin Helm wrote:
> Am 11.01.2014 21:53, schrieb Carlos E. R.:
>> What the OP wants, I guess, is just such a quick and safe application to
>> do it, as user. I don’t know of any such thing.
>>
> quick-usb-formatter
>
> I had to add myself to the disk group when I first installed it to avoid
> running it as root. I have not tested it on 13.1, but I see it is still
> available.
Interesting! 
It is not part of the default repos, I see it in KDE:Extra.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)
IMHO adding an end-user to the disk group is not a very secure idea.
As I tried to explain above, there no difference between formatting mass storage connected through USB or any other bus. Thus this adding will make it possible to destroy (by making an new fs, or by any wrtiting program) all mass storage on your system. In other wordfs, it will nullify an important barrier to self destruction.
henk@boven:~> l /dev/sd*
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 0 12 jan 11:21 /dev/sda
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 1 12 jan 11:21 /dev/sda1
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 2 12 jan 11:21 /dev/sda2
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 3 12 jan 11:21 /dev/sda3
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 4 12 jan 11:21 /dev/sda4
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 5 12 jan 11:21 /dev/sda5
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 6 12 jan 11:21 /dev/sda6
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 16 12 jan 11:21 /dev/sdb
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 32 12 jan 11:21 /dev/sdc
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 48 12 jan 11:21 /dev/sdd
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 64 12 jan 11:21 /dev/sde
henk@boven:~>
I see this as only marginaly different from running allways and everything as root.
On 2014-01-12 12:26, hcvv wrote:
>
> IMHO adding an end-user to the disk group is not a very secure idea.
Well… yes…
The alternative could be making that program SUID, and runable only by
some new group; or using sudo. I’m not about to install that program to
check it, but I hope it takes precautions to identify USB sticks.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)
Am 12.01.2014 14:18, schrieb Carlos E. R.:
> On 2014-01-12 12:26, hcvv wrote:
>>
>> IMHO adding an end-user to the disk group is not a very secure
>> idea.
>
> Well… yes…
>
> The alternative could be making that program SUID, and runable only
> by some new group; or using sudo. I’m not about to install that
> program to check it, but I hope it takes precautions to identify USB
> sticks.
>
I do not say that it is secure to heavily enhance the range of rights a
user has. I just gave an example of a program which more or less does
what is asked for and one possible way to make it work as user.
Of course one can also always do it the good old way and change the menu
entry to run it like yast with xdg-su.
The program identifies and only shows usb devices for formatting (which
by the way made it useless for me, because it does not accept to format
a card in my card reader).
–
PC: oS 13.1 x86_64 | i7-2600@3.40GHz | 16GB | KDE 4.11 | GTX 650 Ti
ThinkPad E320: oS 13.1 x86_64 | i3@2.30GHz | 8GB | KDE 4.11 | HD 3000
HTPC: oS 13.1 x86_64 | Celeron@1.8GHz | 2GB | Gnome 3.10 | HD 2500
As the OP is clearly a brand new Linux user, I thought a warning might be usefull.
Am 12.01.2014 15:36, schrieb hcvv:
>
> As the OP is clearly a brand new Linux user, I thought a warning might
> be usefull.
>
Fair enough
Just to mention what I ended up myself with was using
gnome-disk-utility even though I am a KDE user (the command is gnome-disks).
Why: Because it is more intuitive than for example yast partitioner and
shows what the devices actually are (it shows me a card reader as a card
reader and so on, I do not have to guess from the size of the device
what it is).
–
PC: oS 13.1 x86_64 | i7-2600@3.40GHz | 16GB | KDE 4.11 | GTX 650 Ti
ThinkPad E320: oS 13.1 x86_64 | i3@2.30GHz | 8GB | KDE 4.11 | HD 3000
HTPC: oS 13.1 x86_64 | Celeron@1.8GHz | 2GB | Gnome 3.10 | HD 2500
veeeeery better gnome-disks, thank you for the hint…