Notes re Open office & Linux/Win data

[Craig White]

On Tue, 2006-03-07 at 13:11 -0700, Mark Jarvis wrote:
> 1) I switch between Linux and Windows (XP).
> 
> 2) I use Open Office in both.
> 
> 3) I need my data available to both.
> 
> 4) I use flash drives extensively.
> 
> I've found out (the hard way) that while OO-Win has access to any and 
> all fonts installed in Windows, OO-Linux has its own set of fonts with 
> many of the common and popular fonts simply not available. The default 
> substitutions for common Windows mono-spaced (Courier New) and serif 
> (Times New Roman) fonts aren't too bad. The default substitution for the 
> sans serif font I used to use heavily (Arial), however, stunk. It really 
> messed up page and slide layout when I created something in OO-Win, then 
> brought it up in OO-Linux. Two other fonts, Bitstream Vera Sans and 
> Tahoma, however, are available in both and work quite nicely.
> 
> I keep my data in a fat32/vfat partition that is accessible to all OS 
> installations. I've found that adding ",umask=0,users" to the options in 
> the applicable line in /etc/fstab makes it writable by any user (not 
> just root) and any user can mount or unmount it. This also works for the 
> flash drives, since they also are formatted fat32/vfat. I don't know why 
> the "umask=0" option isn't default. BTW, some distros insist on 
> re-writing /etc/fstab on boot, dumping any special fixes you--the 
> owner--may have added. Usually giving it "400" permissions stops that, 
> but not always.
> 
> Just a couple of tips that might help someone.
----
1. http://corefonts.sourceforge.net/

2. don't know what you mean by some distro's - things have been changing
from 2.4 kernel to early 2.6 kernel to current 2.6 kernel to apparently
new versions of udev methodology and likely since the device is a USB
key, fooling in /etc/fstab is the last place you want to be but playing
in udev.rules is the likely place you want to make your 'user' changes.

The point of udev is to make devices such as these available in user
space and not need root permissions - which is exactly what you are
trying to accomplish it but you are trying to brute force it
via /etc/fstab rather than finding out the specific methodology for your
version/distribution.

If this were a redhat distribution, you would
alter, /etc/udev/rules.udev/10-udev.rules and you could put an entry for
the specific device, where it mounts (generally /media), who can use it,
mount it, eject it, etc.

Craig