On 02-Jun-03 Tom Emerson wrote:
[...] [and later on in this thread it was pointed out that "local users" means "secretaries and the like"] In my opinion, about all a secretary would need to know about "/dev" *might* be the fact that the floppy and CD-rom drives are referenced against this instead of things like "A:" and "D:", and this is only in the case when the automount service fails and the secretary is forced into "some form of command line" to enter a "mount" command. (I say "only when automount fails" because for the most part, the system WILL mount the "drives" in an equally cryptic, but certainly more recognizable name, like /media/floppy...)
I have found that it works well, for users habituated to Windows/DOS,
to set up mount-points called /A:, /B:, /C:, /D:, etc., with corresponding
entries in /dev/fstab, so that (for instance)
/dev/hda3 is automounted on /C:
/dev/hdb2 is automounted on /D:
entering the command "mount /A:" mounts floppy drive 1 on /A:
etc.
That way, users have the feeling of "familiar territory" and can read
the road signs in the way they are used to. So they can (from CLI or
a grahpical navigator) cd to /C:/My_Documents/... They don't need to
know what the system really calls them.
Ted.
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E-Mail: (Ted Harding)