Hi Eberhard,
I know that you are very reluctant to accept conceptional changes to
the CD-ROM drivers, but you should really have a look at the
supermount patch. It is an extremely good and userfriendly idea. You
can still use the established way of mounting devices, which you just
described, but you are not limited to it. The approach that supermount
takes is often better suited to the needs of an exchangeable
medium. This is especially true if you have a device which cannot be
locked (floppy drive or some CD-ROM drives like my external
diskman/CD-ROM), as it does not cause harm if people forget to unmount
the device. I did not know that supermount was available for Linux
2.0, but I very strongly vote for it becoming part of Linux 2.0.1
(note! I did *not* say 2.1.0!). This patch should be part of all
standard Linux distributions as it makes the transition from DOS so
much easier ;-) --- ever tried what happens if you remove a floppy
disk without unmounting it? Unless this has been fixed recently and I
did not read an announcement in the KCS, doing so requires a reboot to
reenable floppy accesses!
Markus