Re: df enhancment for removable media

[Kevin R. Bulgrien]

Paul Eggert wrote:

> Juergen Weigert <address@hidden> writes:
> 
>>> Unless I'm missing something I'd rather not change the default behavor
>>> of df, as that would be a compatibility hassle.  That is, df shouldn't
>>> attempt to mount file systems by default; it should do so only if the
>>> user asks, with a new option.
>>
>> These hald mounts are different. For almost every aspect such a device
>> appears to be mounted. So I figured, df should also pretend the
>> device is mounted.
> 
> But lots of programs other than df invoke statfs.  We shouldn't have
> to change them all.  Instead, it would be much better to fix statfs to
> do the right thing with hald mounts.  statfs should return values that
> are consistent with every other system call: it should not return
> incorrect values simply for the convenience of some low-level hardware
> abstraction layer.
> 
> Please also see the message from Ivan Guyrdiev of Cornell archived at
> <http://www.nsa.gov/selinux/list-archive/0507/thread_body36.cfm> dated
> 2005-07-20 in which he says something similar: the statfs
> implementation needs to get fixed.

Did this ever come to anything.  I have a bash script plug-in for a KDE
application that is hosed on Suse 10 something or another because df
is not reporting the free space on a mounted USB device.

Is there a practical and reliable work-around for a shell script?  Not
sure what questions to ask.  I never heard of df doing this before, 
though now I see it is apparently not df per se.  What is a shell
script to do?

Thanks,

Kevin R. Bulgrien