CONTROLLING WHAT IS SHOWN IN THE USER INTERFACE =============================================== The gvfs-udisks2-volume-monitor process is responsible for the disks, media, mounts and fstab entries shown in the desktop user interface. In particular, the Desktop Shell (gnome-shell), the Files application (nautilus) as well as any other application using the GLib APIs, is using information from this process. In general, disks or media with mountable filesystems are shown, as are fstab entries. These are collectively referred to as "devices" in the following. A device is either mounted (in which case its directory is known) or it's not. If the device is not mounted, then its directory is known only if it's referenced in the /etc/fstab file. Similarly, the options for a device is either the options the device is currently mounted with, or if not mounted, the options from its /etc/fstab entry, if any. If the directory for a device is known and outside /media, $HOME (typically /home/foo) or /run/media/$USER then the device is not shown in the user interface. Additionally, if any of component directories in its directory starts with a dot ("."), the device is not shown either. This policy may be overriden by use of the options x-gvfs-show and x-gvfs-hide. The name and icon to use for a device is chosen according to certain heuristics - for example, if a device has a filesystem label, it is used - if not, some other characteristic is used. The options x-gvfs-name= and x-gvfs-icon= can be used to override this policy with being an URL-encoded string. For icons, the Icon Naming Specification is used. Users are advised to use (stable) symlinks in the /dev/disk/ hierarchy for /etc/fstab entries instead of the kernel names sda, sdb and so on. See udev(7) for more information about this. The Disks application provides an user interface to easily edit /etc/fstab entries including these options, see the "Mount and encryption options" paragraph in this blog entry http://davidz25.blogspot.com/2012/03/simpler-faster-better.html In a multi-seat system, only drives assigned to the seat the session is running on is shown. EXAMPLES -------- # forcibly hide device in user interface /dev/disk/by-id/ata-HITACHI_HTS723232A7A364_E3834563KRG2HN-part1 /home/davidz/Data auto defaults,x-gvfs-hide 0 0 # forcibly show device in user interface and with name "My Movies" /dev/disk/by-uuid/4CAE8E5B5AF47502 /Movies auto defaults,x-gvfs-show,x-gvfs-name=My%20Movies 0 0 # forcibly show NFS mount in user interface 10.200.0.210:/tank/media /mnt/Filer nfs4 default,users,noauto,x-gvfs-show 0 0 INFLUENTIAL UDEV PROPERTIES --------------------------- Note that it's also possible to influence what is shown (and if it's shown) using udev properties. While the udisks(8) man page, see http://udisks.freedesktop.org/docs/latest/udisks.8.html is the authoritative source for the supported properties, we mention specific examples here # Don't automount USB Kingston DataTraveler devices SUBSYSTEMS=="usb", ENV{ID_VENDOR}=="*Kingston*", ENV{ID_MODEL}=="*DataTraveler*", ENV{UDISKS_AUTO}="0" # Automount this specific hard disk and don't require admin authentication ENV{ID_SERIAL}=="WDC_WD1002FAEX-00Y9A0_WD-WCAW30039835", ENV{UDISKS_AUTO}="1", ENV{UDISKS_SYSTEM}="0" # Specify name and icon name for a specific device. ENV{ID_MEDIA_PLAYER}=="apple-ipod", ENV{UDISKS_NAME}="David's iPod", ENV{UDISKS_ICON_NAME}="multimedia-player-ipod" # Make sure this specific hard disk does not appear in the user interface ENV{ID_SERIAL}=="HITACHI_HTS723232A7A364_E3834563KRG2HN", ENV{UDISKS_IGNORE}="1"