[Sugar-devel] Problem listing journal objects

[Jim Simmons]

Michael,

What it sounds like to me is that I will get read-only access to
/proc/mounts and to files and directories on removable media connected
to the USB ports.  I can use ordinary Python IO to list directories
and read files and find out what is mounted.  I can continue to use
the datastore API for entries in the Journal.  While I can create new
entries in the Journal out of slides in my slide shows, I will not be
able to copy them directly to thumb drives, etc.  Any temporary files
I need have to go in the "instance" subdirectory of my Activity.  I
won't be able to use the /temp directory in the future.  Finally, if
someone inserts a thumb drive after my Activity has started I won't be
able to detect that drive.

Please correct me on any of this I got wrong.

Thanks,

James Simmons

>>> [Accessing files on external media from within an activity]
>>>>
>> The public API is the POSIX one, though I don't know how this will be
>> affected by future versions of Rainbow.
>
> 1. Pretty much everything that I know about the future of rainbow features
> is
>   described at
>
>      http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Rainbow/Next_Steps
>
>   Thus, if you don't see answers to your questions already and if you care
> to
>   formulate your question(s) a bit more precisely, I'll be happy to try to
>   improve the page based on them.
>
> 2. I'm not aware of anything other than HAL and parsing /proc/mounts for
>   finding interesting mount points. I personally tend to parse /proc/mounts.
>
> 3. Please be aware that contemporary versions of rainbow call
>   clone(CLONE_NEWNS) or unshare(CLONE_NEWNS) which means that
> rainbow-isolated
>   activities don't see mount-points added to Sugar's namespace after the
>   activity is launched.
>
> Regards,
>
> Michael
>