SUSE LINUX 9.3

Chapter 13. Mobile Computing with Linux / 13.2. Mobile Hardware
	Chapter 13. Mobile Computing with Linux		13.3. Cellular Phones and PDAs

13.2. Mobile Hardware

SUSE LINUX supports the automatic detection of mobile storage devices over firewire (IEEE 1394) or USB. The term mobile storage device applies to any kind of firewire or USB hard disk, USB flash drive, or digital camera. These devices are automatically detected and configured via hotplug as soon as they are connected with the system over the corresponding interface. subfs and submount ensure that the devices are mounted to the corresponding locations in the file system. The user is completely spared the manual mounting and unmounting that was found in previous versions of SUSE LINUX. A device can simply be disconnected as soon as no program accesses it.

External Hard Disks (USB and Firewire): As soon as an external hard disk has been correctly recognized by the system, its icon appears in ‘My Computer’ (KDE) or ‘Computer’ (GNOME) in the list of mounted drives. Clicking the icon displays the contents of the drive. It is possible to create folders and files here and edit or delete them. To rename a hard disk from the name it had been given by the system, select the corresponding menu item from the menu that opens when the icon is right-clicked. This name change is limited to display in the file manager. The descriptor by which the device is mounted in /media/usb-xxx or /media/ieee1394-xxx remains unaffected by this.
USB Flash Drives: These devices are handled by the system just like external hard disks. It is similarly possible to rename the entries in the file manager.
Digital Cameras (USB and Firewire): Digital cameras recognized by the system also appear as external drives in the overview of the file manager. KDE allows reading and accessing the pictures at the URL camera:/. The images can then be processed using digikam or The GIMP. When using GNOME, Nautilus displays the pictures in their own folder. A simple image processing and management utility is GThumb. Advanced photo processing is done with The GIMP. These programs are described in the User Guide with the exception of GThumb. There is also a chapter about digital cameras.

	Securing Mobile Data Drives
Mobile hard disks or flash drives are as prone to theft as laptops. It is recommended to create an encrypted partition on them as described in Section 34.3, “Encrypting Partitions and Files” to prevent abuse by third parties.