gvfs_automount.py

Overview

Automatically mounts removable media (eg: CD-ROMS, USB-drives, etc.) upon insertion/connection. Also generates a desktop notification when it mounts something.

Usage

It's a good idea to pipe stdout to a file or to /dev/null, as Python tends to freak out if stdout gets closed. From something like an .xsession file you'd want to do something like:

~/bin/gvfs_automount.py >/dev/null &

If you use i3, like I do, you can add something like this to your .i3/config instead:

exec --no-startup-id ~/bin/gvfs_automount.py >/dev/null

(These both assume you've put the script in ~/bin -- adjust the path accordingly.)

Why I Wrote This

I use the i3 tiling window manager on top of a Gnome session. My setup is a based on this one, but without a Gnome panel:

# /usr/share/xsessions/gnome-i3.desktop
[Desktop Entry]
Name=GNOME with i3
Comment=A GNOME fallback mode session using i3 as the window manager.
Exec=gnome-session --session=i3
TryExec=gnome-session
Icon=
Type=Application


# /usr/share/gnome-session/sessions/i3.session
[GNOME Session]
Name=gnome-i3
RequiredComponents=gnome-settings-daemon;i3;

When I upgraded my system from Ubuntu 13.10 to 14.04, auto-mounting mysteriously stopped working. You can see the Ask Ubuntu question I asked about this for more details.

Since that question got no answers, I looked through the source for gvfs-mount, read some Python GTK+ 3 documentation, and wrote this script.