Summary of rules

At startup, a list of locations are checked against the presence of autorun files. They are, successively:

• if the ar_source= parameter was passed at startup, the root directory of the given mountable device. This is primarily intended for floppy disks :

  • fb800 ar_source=/dev/fd0
    

  but may be used with hard disk partitions too :

  • fb800 ar_source=/dev/hda2
    

    to look for autorun scripts in 2nd partition of 1st IDE hard disk

  • fb800 ar_source=/dev/sdb6
    

    to look in 6th partition of 2nd SCSI hard disk
  and with network shares. The syntax is :

  • fb800 ar_source=nfs-server:/nfs/exported/directory
    

    for NFS shares

  • fb800 ar_source=//samba-server/share
    

    for SMB shares (recommended without user/password)
  Source devices are mounted to /mnt/autorun, allowing writing data into them if the device is not write-protected.
• the root directory of the CDrom
• the superuser home directory (/root)
• the /usr/share/sys.autorun directory

If autorun files are found in some location, they are run and the process ends. Last two locations require rebuilding of SystemRescueCd and are to be used for advanced or test purposes.

In each source location, there are two possible modes of operation :

• simple one : if a shell script named ``autorun'' is found, it is run
• more flexible : if ``autorun#'' scripts are found (# is a digit from 0 to 9) and either
  • autoruns= boot parameter was NOT specified, or
  • autoruns= boot parameter value contains #
    (ex: ``fb800 autoruns=0,1,4'' - In this example, only autorun0, autorun1 or autorun4 scripts may be run if present. Other scripts, such as autorun2, autorun3 and autorun5, will be ignored)
  then authorized scripts are run in alphabetic order. Whenever a script returns a non-zero code, the processing stops and next scripts are not run. You can prevent any ``autorun#'' execution with an autorun= boot parameter without any digit, ex: ``autoruns=no''. This has no effect on ``autorun'' script.

Although it is possible to put both ``autorun'' and ``autorun#'' scripts, this should probably be avoided.

The script has to be any valid shell script. Perl, python, ... etc. scripts are not supported at this time. Windows end-of-line terminators are translated to allow running shell scripts written with a MS editor.