Notes re Open office & Linux/Win data

[Craig White]

On Tue, 2006-03-07 at 13:47 -0700, Craig White wrote:
> 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.
----
I should have linked the following for an excellent over all view of
udev

http://www.reactivated.net/writing_udev_rules.html

Craig