USB automounting in GNOME

foxbunny · 2007-10-02 15:29:33

I've searched around a bit, but I was limited time-wize so I couldn't come up with a solution.

So here goes. I've installed the latest GNOME from [EXTRA] and found out that the USB stick doesn't automount. Strange thing is, my mobile will successfully automount as mass storage, and CDs, DVDs automount as well. Dmesg output shows that the device is correctly recognized and that the /dev/ node is created without any problem. Also, the USB stick shows up if I boot the system with it attached to the port.

I've tried adding myself to hal AND/OR dbus groups, but no combination of those work, so I removed myself again. I'm in storage, disk, optical and floppy groups, can modify and create files on my mounted mobile's storage card...

Also skimmed over the HAL wiki page... I'm all out of ideas, except that I don't know how to test if a missing module might help...

Oh yeah, forgot to mention. It's a friesh Arch install from the latest 2008.1 iso. I did the "mount -t ramfs none /dev" thingie as per the notice at the ISO download mirror.

TIA

Doehni · 2007-10-02 17:22:20

Have you installed and started the fam daemon? That's needed for proper multimedia in Gnome and KDE.
Also become a member of hal and dbus again!

foxbunny · 2007-10-03 12:32:38

Both HAL and FAM are installed and started. I don't know if this matters but I'm entering GNOME via GDM which is started the lazy way, through DAEMONS list in rc.conf...

Being part of hal and/or dbus group doesn't help. Tried it. Tried rebooting after becoming member, but no difference. USB stick used to mount correctly under KDEmod, but I'm not too keen on installing KDE again just to test that it still works...

Matt3o · 2007-10-03 12:40:52

random suggestions. do you have volume manager installed? is your user in disk, storage, optical groups? is your USB stick formatted in some arcane filesystem?

Dheart · 2007-10-03 18:13:16

You have to add yourself in the storage group (also hal must be in the storage group)
Your /etc/group file for storage should look like this:

storage:x:95:hal,dheart

(NOTE: dheart is my username so you must replace it with yours)
(NOTE 2: I find using a tool for automatic mounting a bit lame, do it manually as it's shown in the wiki.)

foxbunny · 2007-10-03 21:30:30

@Dheart
My neighbour, I'm not exactly new to arch and/or command line, just to make it clear.

@Matt3o
What's a volume manager? I installed GNOME using "pacman -S gnome gnome-extra" command, so it may have installed a volume manager and whatnot along with GNOME.

# pacman -Qs lvm
local/lvm2 2.02.28-1 (base)
    Logical Volume Manager 2 utilities

As a side-note, the stick is formatted fat32.

Here's the dmesg output:

# dmesg | tail
sd 4:0:0:0: [sdd] Mode Sense: 03 00 00 00
sd 4:0:0:0: [sdd] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 4:0:0:0: [sdd] 4005888 512-byte hardware sectors (2051 MB)
sd 4:0:0:0: [sdd] Write Protect is off
sd 4:0:0:0: [sdd] Mode Sense: 03 00 00 00
sd 4:0:0:0: [sdd] Assuming drive cache: write through
 sdd: sdd1
sd 4:0:0:0: [sdd] Attached SCSI removable disk
sd 4:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg4 type 0
usb-storage: device scan complete

Nothing out of the ordinary. And here's my /etc/group:

# gpasswd -a blackfox scanner
unknown group: scanner
gpasswd: Permission denied.
[root@foxen-desktop blackfox]# cat /etc/group
....
disk::6:root,blackfox
....
optical::93:blackfox,hal
floppy:x:94:blackfox,hal
storage:x:95:blackfox,hal
....
users::100:
....

Now, what I've just noticed is this strange "users::100:". Now what the heck is that? Don't I need to be member of users?

Anyway, to repeat myself.

The mobile phone, when connected via USB cable, mounts as a mass storage device and shows up as a "Removable Volume" icon. That is, however, not the case with my FAT32 stick.

EDIT:

Right as I was about to post some more dmesg output, the stick mounted properly.

Anyway, dmesg output prior to successful mount:

# dmesg | tail
sd 8:0:0:0: [sde] READ CAPACITY failed
sd 8:0:0:0: [sde] Result: hostbyte=0x01 driverbyte=0x00
sd 8:0:0:0: [sde] Sense not available.
sd 8:0:0:0: [sde] Write Protect is off
sd 8:0:0:0: [sde] Mode Sense: 00 00 00 00
sd 8:0:0:0: [sde] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 8:0:0:0: [sde] Attached SCSI removable disk
sd 8:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg5 type 0
usb-storage: device scan complete
usb 3-6: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 14

On next connect, the stick fails to mount again.

# dmesg | tail
sd 10:0:0:0: [sde] Mode Sense: 03 00 00 00
sd 10:0:0:0: [sde] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 10:0:0:0: [sde] 4005888 512-byte hardware sectors (2051 MB)
sd 10:0:0:0: [sde] Write Protect is off
sd 10:0:0:0: [sde] Mode Sense: 03 00 00 00
sd 10:0:0:0: [sde] Assuming drive cache: write through
 sde: sde1
sd 10:0:0:0: [sde] Attached SCSI removable disk
sd 10:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg5 type 0
usb-storage: device scan complete

Last edited by foxbunny (2007-10-03 21:37:04)

Dheart · 2007-10-04 06:37:50

Sorry, foxbunny, neighbour if I offended you with my post.
In users group I have myself added, but I don't think that's the problem.
In my system hal was always automounting everything which was buging me like hell (since I use custom and different mount points every time)
I think that lvm is somehow in conflict with hal and try disabling it...

EmyrB · 2007-10-04 07:39:13

Hi Foxbunny,

I had same issue with my Gnome 2.20 install. Make sure that you are a member of the storage group as well as HAL and DBus, also make damn sure that fam is in the list of Deamons in rc.conf after networking or network manager as this solved my issues. With fam there it now automounts any CD or DVD I have in the drive as well.

Hope this helps

Linteg · 2007-10-04 07:48:11

lvm2 is for management of logical volumes (~partitions) and nothing to do with automounting of usb sticks or cds, what you are looking for is gnome-volume-manager, which is the gnome tool that takes care of automounting. But as some things already automount you probably have it installed already, try checking gnome's preferences for removable media (gnome-volume-properties).

Last edited by Linteg (2007-10-04 07:54:44)

foxbunny · 2007-10-04 10:16:59

Dheart wrote:

Sorry, foxbunny, neighbour if I offended you with my post.

Not at all. Just wanted to save you the trouble of writing noob-friendly instructions.

Dheart wrote:

In users group I have myself added, but I don't think that's the problem.

Neither does it work. So it's definitely not the problem.

EmyrB wrote:

Make sure that you are a member of the storage group as well as HAL and DBus, also make damn sure that fam is in the list of Deamons in rc.conf after networking or network manager as this solved my issues.

I checked all that, and listed the results above. Sorry if it was a bit confusing. Being part of hal and dbus groups didn't solve the problem, so I removed myself from those, as per recommendation in the HAL wiki page. Also added the HAl rule mentioned in the troubleshooting section of the same article. That didn't help either. BTW, CDs/DVDs mount correctly. As do some of my other USB storage devices like phones and mp4 players.

Linteg wrote:

lvm2 is for management of logical volumes (~partitions) and nothing to do with automounting of usb sticks or cds, what you are looking for is gnome-volume-manager, which is the gnome tool that takes care of automounting. But as some things already automount you probably have it installed already, try checking gnome's preferences for removable media (gnome-volume-properties).

Thanks Linteg. I will check that as soon as I get home.

Matt3o · 2007-10-04 11:30:51

I heard of some pen drives firmware bugs that prevent them to mount properly on linux (even if they work flawlessly on windows). The solution could be to low level format the pen drive and then use GParted to format it to FAT32

foxbunny · 2007-10-04 21:09:37

This particular problem is unique to GNOME, AFAIK.

Anyway, I took a looong look at gnome-volume-properties. Nothing there. USB devices are set to automount and autoopen.

Also tried removing gnome-volume-manager, and rebooting, then attaching the USB stick. No luck there either.

I'm compiling a kamikaze kernel in hope it is kernel-related. Up until now, I was using kamikaze 2.6 + KDE. Then I switched to ARCH 2.6 + GNOME and USB automounting stopped working. So it might be the kernel.

Yonk · 2007-10-10 19:48:45

any news? ...

got the same problem and no solution so far =/

hope someone might shed some light into this matter

hussam · 2007-10-10 20:07:41

check that gnome-mount and gnome-volume-manager are installed correctly. Gnome-volume-manager should be running too.
Gnome uses gnome-mount instead of pmount.
gnome-mount should be installed with nautilus anyway.

Last edited by hussam (2007-10-10 20:08:24)

foxbunny · 2007-10-11 10:38:57

I have both installed and up. Tried changing some settings in gnome-volume-manager, but could not find anything relevant...

I tried another USB sitck, different make and model, and it works flawlessly. BTW, I just tried the problematic one in a few different distros (openSUSE, and PCLOS) and they can both mount it (GNOME and KDE respectively).

All out of ideas. For now, I can mount it manually. But, you know, it's an unnecessary hussle.

BTW, openSUSE has screwed up my Arch partition so I can't boot any longer. I will try to reinstall with the new ISO and will report back. Maybe acpi=off will do the trick this time. I had it on on an AthlonXP proc. Maybe that's the problem (just guessing, though).

Last edited by foxbunny (2007-10-11 10:43:46)

Grenshad · 2007-10-21 21:19:10

I have the same problem. After update to Gnome 2.20, usbstick does no more mount automagically (but i can mount it manually). I've tried to reinstall most of the software quoted in this topic (hal, gnome mount stuff, ..., also try autofs with no more success). I can't say from where come the problem, udev ? hal ? gnome-volume-manager ? :-(

All this chain seems very hard to understand for me (as I read english as bad as I wrote it )

foxbunny · 2007-10-21 21:37:16

Try with another device. I've had success with some USB devices, whereas with my own UBS stick I have not.

BTW, the same USB stick mounts just fine under KDE. so this is NOT hal/fam/dbus/whathaveya issue. I guess it's GNOME.

Last edited by foxbunny (2007-10-21 21:38:30)

Grenshad · 2007-10-24 11:02:20

I've tried with my carplayer (which act like an usbstick, use the usb mass storage system), but it doesn't automount, as for the usbstick.

foxbunny · 2007-10-24 11:39:01

I've successfully mounted my other USB stick. No problem, just plugged in. Even without any tweaking. The mp4 player (also acts like an USB mass storage) works as well. So I guess you need to do a few things suggested here. Take a look at HAL page in the wiki. There is a troubleshooting page.

Generally, I think GNOME could be broken (in Arch or upstream, dunno). KDE mounts the all devices just fine.

Grenshad · 2007-10-29 23:50:32

Thanks your help, it was finally a gnome-arch-something broken (as foxbunny said). Recent updates for hal, gnome-mount & gnome-device-manager just fix that all to perfection again

JGC · 2007-10-30 07:51:28

Doehni wrote:

Have you installed and started the fam daemon? That's needed for proper multimedia in Gnome and KDE.
Also become a member of hal and dbus again!

fam has nothing to do with automounting. And next thing: being a member of dbus and hal groups is a security leak. They're both not required to make hal work.

foxbunny · 2007-10-30 16:43:03

Yes, and besides, it was not a HAL issue anyway. It was most likely GNOME. I had KDE automount removables with the same HAL/Dbus setup.

wizzard · 2007-11-02 18:04:17

I have the same problem, I just did a fresh install of arch on two computers, one fully updated to stable one fully updated to testing. Both have gnome 2.20, and neither will automount USB devices. CDs and DVD's automount, as well as disk partitions (I used gparted to format a partition on my computer while I was inside gnome and it picked up the new partition and automounted it).

Wizzard

foxbunny · 2007-11-02 18:08:32

wizzard, consider switching to Xfce or KDE. The solution to this problem eluded me for some time before I gave up. And none of the suggestions here did work. KDE does the job just fine, and Xfce probably will (or maybe not, I haven't tested).

killajoe · 2007-11-04 19:55:10

Solution under Gnome 2.20

Do the following in a root terminal:

nano /etc/hal/fdi/policy/90-user-methods.fdi

insert:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<deviceinfo version="0.2">
<device>
<match key="volume.fsusage" string="filesystem">
<merge key="volume.ignore" type="bool">true</merge>
<match key="@block.storage_device:storage.removable" bool="true">
<merge key="volume.ignore" type="bool">false</merge>
<merge key="storage.policy.should_mount" type="bool">true</merge>
</match>
</match>
</device>
</deviceinfo>

reboot and external USB-Disk will be mounted automaticly after insert...

>> usb Sticks works betterb when formatting with fat16!!!

Last edited by killajoe (2007-11-04 19:55:30)

Arch Linux

#1 2007-10-02 15:29:33

USB automounting in GNOME

#2 2007-10-02 17:22:20

Re: USB automounting in GNOME

#3 2007-10-03 12:32:38

Re: USB automounting in GNOME

#4 2007-10-03 12:40:52

Re: USB automounting in GNOME

#5 2007-10-03 18:13:16

Re: USB automounting in GNOME

#6 2007-10-03 21:30:30

Re: USB automounting in GNOME

#7 2007-10-04 06:37:50

Re: USB automounting in GNOME

#8 2007-10-04 07:39:13

Re: USB automounting in GNOME

#9 2007-10-04 07:48:11

Re: USB automounting in GNOME

#10 2007-10-04 10:16:59

Re: USB automounting in GNOME

#11 2007-10-04 11:30:51

Re: USB automounting in GNOME

#12 2007-10-04 21:09:37

Re: USB automounting in GNOME

#13 2007-10-10 19:48:45

Re: USB automounting in GNOME

#14 2007-10-10 20:07:41

Re: USB automounting in GNOME

#15 2007-10-11 10:38:57

Re: USB automounting in GNOME

#16 2007-10-21 21:19:10

Re: USB automounting in GNOME

#17 2007-10-21 21:37:16

Re: USB automounting in GNOME

#18 2007-10-24 11:02:20

Re: USB automounting in GNOME

#19 2007-10-24 11:39:01

Re: USB automounting in GNOME

#20 2007-10-29 23:50:32

Re: USB automounting in GNOME

#21 2007-10-30 07:51:28

Re: USB automounting in GNOME

#22 2007-10-30 16:43:03

Re: USB automounting in GNOME

#23 2007-11-02 18:04:17

Re: USB automounting in GNOME

#24 2007-11-02 18:08:32

Re: USB automounting in GNOME

#25 2007-11-04 19:55:10

Re: USB automounting in GNOME

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