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From: Andrej N. G. <an...@re...> - 2012-11-20 22:39:40
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Hello!
Today my niece got into problem. Flash card on their videocamera
showed free 9MB of 8GB while every file was deleted. Obvious thought is
to re-format it. But how to do it? The most obvious thing would be to
find some option under computer:// of course. But all icons in there
have only two items in context menu: 'Open with...' and 'Properties',
none of them give any help. I would like to add someting into 1.2 for
such purpose but I don't know the best expectation for it, i.e. how to
implement it. There are few questions coming:
a) where in context menu should be new option?
b) what the option it should be? 'Format volume'? 'Volume properties'?
c) what application should serve that option?
d) how to define that application?
What do you think about all of that?
WBR, Andriy.
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From: Andrej N. G. <an...@re...> - 2012-11-20 23:46:58
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Hello!
JM has written on Wednesday, 21 November, at 0:12:
>On Wed, 21 Nov 2012 00:39:27 +0200
>"Andrej N. Gritsenko" <an...@re...> wrote:
[.......]
>> none of them give any help. I would like to add someting into 1.2 for
>> such purpose but I don't know the best expectation for it, i.e. how to
>> implement it. There are few questions coming:
>> a) where in context menu should be new option?
>> b) what the option it should be? 'Format volume'? 'Volume properties'?
>> c) what application should serve that option?
>> d) how to define that application?
>I have had to do that lately for someone else's camera, so I inserted the flash card into
>a card reader connected to my box through USB.
>If you can do the same, then open Gparted, look at the right corner of the window,
>choose the flash drive disk (it's a drop down menu where you should see something such as
>"/dev/sd<something" : be careful, all storage peripherals are shown there, including your
>hard drive... ) and then erase the drive, apply, add new, and format it to Fat16. This is
>the format needed for these cards.
I understand it. GParted is for experienced users and I would rather
do manual formatting instead of 'sudo gparted' for such trivial operation
but I'm talking about very unexperienced users. There is an alternative
for GParted, it's GDU, which doesn't ask you to start it under root and I
hope it may be more useful for users: they have write rights to USB drive
but not to system one so will not accidentally break own system. In any
case, it should be available from a computer:// folder for unexperienced
users directly without searching for it via start menu so what I asked
you is how to help someone who doesn't know much about unixes (imagine
all new users who freshly came from Windows world for example). We should
help them. Do you have any ideas how to organize it properly? Thank you
in advance.
Andriy.
P.S. BTW, I suppose FAT16 isn't appropriate for 8GB drives, it may not
always work, FAT32 seems more fit for them.
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From: Andrej N. G. <an...@re...> - 2012-11-21 00:59:25
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Hello!
JM has written on Wednesday, 21 November, at 1:05:
>You said:
>" Today my niece got into problem. Flash card on their videocamera
>showed free 9MB of 8GB while every file was deleted. Obvious thought is
>to re-format it. But how to do it? "
>therefore I didn't suppose you were talking about making it a userland feature. I don't
>know how to create a custom action in pcmanfm, or in any file manager either by the way.
I'm sorry for not being very clear. I sometimes say things that other
can't understand what I meant exactly but see another meaning. I'm sorry.
I meant exactly how it should be presented to users. I do know how to add
possible actions into any menu in pcmanfm (and 1.2 will bring two more of
extensions for that) but what I don't know: how to present it in the most
convenient way.
>But I know that when you start Gparted (don't use sudo, it is a pkexec command, so you
>should be prompted for the root password just by starting it from menus and if it does
>not, then type "gksu gparted", and avoid using "sudo" for gui applications) so when you
>start Gparted, there is not a tool as easy as this one and as secure to manage any storage
>device. One, it will not let you format a mounted drive. Two, everything is very clear in
>the menus, three it always performs a test before doing the formatting, so if something
>is not ok it will not format a drive.
gksu is in fact the same thing as sudo: it runs the application with
EUID root but it is not commandline tool but GUI one. Anyway it will run
GParted under root privileges and risk to break system disk still exists
if user doesn't know any difference. You know, USB flash drive will need
unmounting as well so accidents may be possible. :)
I've used GParted but I would not recommend to use it to an user who
never seen any disk tool and doesn't know what any /dev/sdX means, what
is the drive, what is the partition and isn't tech person at all. Let me
present their look at it:
- What that table means? Some crazy numbers, I don't understand them!
- Those bars are the fragmentation of my drive? Why it is fragmented?
- Where is my flash drive? Only hard drive I can see there!
- What is meaning of 'New'? It will search for my flash drive?
- What is meaning of 'Delete'? It will detach my hard drive cable?
Believe me, they will think this way if they don't see all the drives and
actions in the main window. GParted is a tool for repartitioning, not for
easy (no-click to see, and single-click for advanced test) inspecting the
state of the drive and/or unmounting/reformatting it in intuitive way. I
think, GDU is such kind of tool, have you ever tried it?
>If your idea would be to create actions such as what is implemented in Windows where it
>is easy to reformat a drive the way you describe it, well, so be it. Just don't forget
>that in Windows the default is to be logged in as administrator, without a password.
In UNIX you still have full access to flash drive if you are member
of appropriate group so it will be not a problem. The problem is how to
do it appropriately and simple for mentioned user who wants to format it
and that is the first time in the life he/she doing some disk operation.
Thank you very much!
Andriy.
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From: Andrej N. G. <an...@re...> - 2012-11-21 13:14:40
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Hello!
Joost van der Hoff has written on Wednesday, 21 November, at 13:45:
>I may be too late with this message but there might not be a need to
>reformat the card. You see, unlike Windows, Linux has a trash bin not just
>for the hard drive but it also makes trash bins on external storage. Look
>for a hidden folder named .trash-1000 or something like that in the root of
>your sdcard, and use the "permanently delete" (or something like that, I
>don't know exactly what it's called) option on that folder. This should
>return your storage space to the card.
The exact problem was - after they've deleted that folder there was
no files on drive but it still showed card full. Don't know why it was
but that happens sometimes, it's not first time I see that problem. I've
changed 'no_usb_trash' option for them to 1 now so they hopefully never
get into that .Trash-XXXX problem again but anyway, only way that could
fix the problem was via the camera menu option 'format card' and I'm not
happy that there is no easy way to do it in their LXDE. They even told me
"Move files from camera to comp is a question of few minutes on Windows,
why we spent an hour to do it? Your Linux is very bad for that!"
Andriy.
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From: Julien L. <gi...@ub...> - 2012-11-21 18:18:24
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Le 11/20/2012 11:39 PM, Andrej N. Gritsenko a écrit : > a) where in context menu should be new option? > b) what the option it should be? 'Format volume'? 'Volume properties'? > c) what application should serve that option? > d) how to define that application? > > What do you think about all of that? Yes, it's something that could be very useful. I think the easiest way is to add the option when you right click on the Volume on the sidebar, or on computer:// Having an option "Erase / Format" or something like this may be useful. I remember that gnome-format was a simple application to do it, but it's quite old. Regards, Julien Lavergne |
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From: Andrej N. G. <an...@re...> - 2012-11-21 19:31:17
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Hello!
Julien Lavergne has written on Wednesday, 21 November, at 19:18:
>Le 11/20/2012 11:39 PM, Andrej N. Gritsenko a écrit :
>> a) where in context menu should be new option?
>> b) what the option it should be? 'Format volume'? 'Volume properties'?
>> c) what application should serve that option?
>> d) how to define that application?
>>
>> What do you think about all of that?
>Yes, it's something that could be very useful. I think the easiest way
>is to add the option when you right click on the Volume on the sidebar,
>or on computer:// Having an option "Erase / Format" or something like
>this may be useful.
It's what I thought about too.
>I remember that gnome-format was a simple application to do it, but it's
>quite old.
May be we should revive it for use with PCManFM? What do you think?
Andriy.
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From: Julien L. <gi...@ub...> - 2012-11-21 21:42:58
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Le 11/21/2012 08:31 PM, Andrej N. Gritsenko a écrit : > May be we should revive it for use with PCManFM? What do you think? Well, I had a quick look at it, it probably needs some work make it work again (new Vala, get ride of waf, maybe udisk2 migration ...). It's maybe an overkill if you just want an option to format the volume. Maybe just using a dd command when using the option ? Regards, Julien Lavergne |
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From: Andrej N. G. <an...@re...> - 2012-11-22 13:17:47
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Hello!
Julien Lavergne has written on Wednesday, 21 November, at 22:42:
>Le 11/21/2012 08:31 PM, Andrej N. Gritsenko a écrit :
>> May be we should revive it for use with PCManFM? What do you think?
>Well, I had a quick look at it, it probably needs some work make it work
>again (new Vala, get ride of waf, maybe udisk2 migration ...). It's
>maybe an overkill if you just want an option to format the volume. Maybe
>just using a dd command when using the option ?
Using dd command require a lot of skills and some empty images. And
in many cases it will not help due to big number of USB devices around.
What user would want in this case is a simple window where he/she can
choose format (with default to FAT) and buttons "Start" and "Cancel". It
would be very nice if someone could make such simple tool for LXDE so I
could add it to context menu of pcmanfm.
With best wishes.
Andriy.
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From: Andrej N. G. <an...@re...> - 2013-08-29 00:02:38
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Hello!
Daniele Forsi has written on Wednesday, 21 November, at 17:46:
>2012/11/21 Andrej N. Gritsenko:
>> after deletion of 8GB files no space was freed. So files were not hidden
>> but some FAT corruption seemed to be so reformatting was required.
>in this use case I don't think that the user should even see the word
>FAT or EXT or whatever and the program should try to use the same file
>system and label if possible
It is question to program used, not to pcmanfm...
>instead of a fixed "Format" item in the context menu, expanding the
>use "Open with..." menu item that is already present for disks, would
>allow more flexibility, so that some users could configure it to run
>gparted (or run fsck or fdisk for other use cases) while others would
>use simpler programs
Unfortunately the "Format" is not subject for context menu for the
disk because unmounted USB stick will be not in any folder except for
computer:/// perhaps but I still have no idea what to do with that the
computer:/// folder so it is "just for fun" yet.
>I think that it's better to keep actions in the context menu, a
>"Format" button could be added in a "Tools" page in the Properties,
>which would allow to add a minimal user interface in the property
>window itself (eg. to change the label or to show a progress bar), but
>I don't think it would be easy to find it for inesperienced users and
>would make disks different from files (for which the properties pages
>doesn't allow to open them, unless we add "Play" for music, "Print"
>for documents, and so on)
Well, that might be good if we call Properties for item in the same
computer:/// folder. It is not available in other places. And also there
is no Tools page in the Properties as well. It is easy to make it though
since we already have plugins for the Properties window. But I think it
is a bit complicated way - user should:
1) open computer:/// folder
2) find required disk there and right-click it
3) open Tools tab
4) click Format
and also user should know all of that somehow. Well, you said that too.
I prefer KISS principle so therefore:
1) find required disk in sidebar and right-click it
2) click Format
and it's why I implemented it that way in libfm now, it will be shortly
released as 1.2.0-beta0. Out of all applications I found only one of them
that is working, it is a part of GDU. To use it libfm.conf should contain
a statement:
format_cmd=/usr/lib/gnome-disk-utility/gdu-format-tool -d
It works simple though the utility still offers FAT for DVD disk. :D
Cheers!
Andriy.
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