Automatically Mount USB Drives with Pmount

My favorite file manager to use with lightweight window managers like OpenBox, Fluxbox, and IceWM is Rox-Filer. It’s small, lightweight, and highly configurable. It works great on a full desktop as well as small-screen netbooks like the Asus Eee PC.

The only problem is that it doesn’t handle auto-mounting your USB drives, CD-ROMs, and other removable media. Lucky for us, it’s quite easy to get working with a couple helper apps: Ivman and Pmount.

If you’d like to try out Rox-filer, you can easily install it in Ubuntu through Add/Remove Programs, Synaptic, or by issuing the following command in a terminal:

sudo apt-get install rox-filer

To get auto-mount working, we need to install Ivman (the app that does the mounting) and Pmount (the app that lets normal users mount media drives):

sudo apt-get install ivman pmount

Next, we need to let Pmount know which devices users can mount.

Open /etc/pmount.allow as administrator:

sudo gedit /etc/pmount.allow

Add the following lines to that file:

/dev/cdrom
/dev/sdb1


That should probably take care of it in Ubuntu.

Now, we need to configure Rox-filer to use Pmount:

Right Click in a Rox-filer window -> Options -> Select “Action Windows” in the left pane.

Replace “mount” command in right pane with “pmount” (sans quotes)

Replace “unmount” command with “pumount” (again, no quotes).

Hit “Okay.” Alright, only one more step!!

Start Ivman at the terminal by typing:

ivman

Insert your USB drive or CD, and see if it works by checking in /media/.

For this to work right, you will need to have ivman start at each login. I made sure to put “exec ivman &” in my ~/.icewm/startup file, for instance.

edited from:
http://productivelinux.com/2009/01/31/how-to-automatically-mount-usb-drives-with-rox-filer-ivman-and-pmount/