USB disk access of every type is hosed - HELP!?

jimmarch · 2007-08-07 21:17:03

Newbie with the very latest "Don't Panic" running on a laptop. I'm coming off a year with various bloateddistros, looking for something fast and stable.

I've got my internal drive up, networking, x, gnome and openoffice all working great. Next step is to plug in my external 160gig drive with all my data on it. This is a very standard USB2-to-EIDE drive, I've had no problems with it in any distro. It's split between a 32gig FAT32 partition and a 119gig Ext3.

I followed the wiki on autofs. Nothing. Then played with HAL and the like. Made my user a member of group "storage". Still nothing.

I've seen mount problems before of course, so I tried adding gparted via pacman and running that from a root command line just to see what's physically out there. Not good: gparted never finishes getting past the "Scanning all devices....." process with the blue bar bouncing back and forth. When gparted first starts I can hear the external disk spin up and chug for a few seconds, but then nothing.

I tried a 1gig USB flash critter (probably Fat32), nothing there either. I think something is fundamentally hosed in my USB disk support. I do have a USB external trackball working though...so my ports are up.

My daemons at present:

DAEMONS=(syslog-ng network netfs crond ntpd hal cups gdm alunnd)

Heeeelp! Neeeed my daaaata!

Wait, something else weird: if I turn on the external disk I see some CPU activity on my gnome panel monitor. Nothing major, a few light spikes. I've got a Celeron 1.6 but with the new 533 memory bus and 2gigs RAM. Once I run gparted it goes bananas and then once I close gparted CPU activity is pegged hard at 100% - yet there's no listed process eating that. Then when I turn off the external drive, CPU activity falls back to normal.

WTF, over?

Jim

Fork · 2007-08-07 22:13:21

you need to add dbus to your DEAMONS. That should do the trick (worked for me)

Not sure if order is important, but put dbus before hal

Last edited by Fork (2007-08-07 22:16:21)

Misfit138 · 2007-08-07 22:35:05

Actually, hal autoloads dbus. If you put dbus after hal you will most likely get a quick FAILED error on bootup when loading dbus.
Have you added your user to the disk group? I cannot properly manage USB pendrives without being in the disk group.

# gpasswd -a username disk

Some have mentioned a dislike for this method, citing a possible security risk, but I've never had an issue.

jimmarch · 2007-08-07 22:52:47

Misfit: nope, that didn't do it. And you're right, putting dbus after hal just gives an error.

I even tried running nautilus as root and checking the /mnt and /media directories. Nothing.

Here's my fstab file:

---
#
# /etc/fstab: static file system information
#
# <file system> <dir> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
none /dev/pts devpts defaults 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0

/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom iso9660 ro,user,noauto,unhide 0 0
/dev/dvd /mnt/dvd udf ro,user,noauto,unhide 0 0
/dev/sda1 / reiserfs defaults 0 1
---

Yes, I'm messing around with Reiserfs on my boot disk, and with 2gigs RAM on tap I'm trying a swapless setup. Are either of those maybe connected?

Thanks...I really need to get to my data .

Jim

Misfit138 · 2007-08-07 23:12:15

Well I'm stumped. If you are using hal, and after plugging in a USB pendrive or your USB hard drive, you SHOULD immediately get a desktop icon for the drive.
I don't use Gnome, but I know that KDE requires the fam daemon...but I doubt that's it.
Someone here will be able to guide us to the right track, I am sure.

jimmarch · 2007-08-08 00:01:17

OK...wait, at a VERY low level, how do I probe to see which disks are attached?

Let's assume I boot up with the disks in place to make this as easy as possible...I was hoping to use gparted as a "show all my disks" command. It will work even if it thinks the partitions are wonky. Except in this case...?

jimmarch · 2007-08-08 00:02:16

Is it possible autofs is getting in the way of hal and/or dbus?

veek · 2007-08-08 00:31:49

Okay, if you plug in an usb pen drive, you should see nodes created in /dev: /dev/sda and /dev/sda1.

If you see those nodes created then you'll know that your usb drives are at least being detected.
I think this detection is handled by udev.

If they're fat32 drives you could mount them like (for example):

mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt/usb

jimmarch · 2007-08-08 00:52:43

OK...I'm seeing these at /dev:

sda
sda1
sdb1
sdb5
sdb6

There's also:
usb1
...through...
usb5

Then there's this block:

usbdev1.1_ep81
usbdev1.3_ep00
usbdev1.3_ep01
usbdev1.3_ep82
usbdev2.1_ep00
usbdev2.1_ep81
usbdev3.1_ep00
usbdev3.1_ep81
usbdev3.2_ep00
usbdev3.2_ep81
usbdev4.1_ep00
usbdev4.1_ep81
usbdev5.1_ep00
usbdev5.1_ep81

When I check /mnt, the SOLE directories are CDROM and DVD...I checked for hidden stuff too, there's nothing else. (All this checking was as root.)

Sounds like I need folders in /mnt ?

In /media there's a zero-byte file called ".hal-mtab-lock"?

jimmarch · 2007-08-08 00:55:26

Stupid question: XFCE has it's own disk access under Thunar, right? Can I load the XFCE package and run Thunar under Gnome, bringing this damned disk up?

Yeah, I'm that desperate, I need that stuff muy pronto muchachos...(God I've been in Arizona too long)...

Misfit138 · 2007-08-08 01:16:00

Your "show all disks command" might be
fdisk -l

Thats a lower case L.
But hal should be mounting your drives under /media.... udev should be creating the /dev directories.
What do you show under the /media directory? if you see /media/usb, that should be your drive, I believe.

Last edited by Misfit138 (2007-08-08 01:18:12)

veek · 2007-08-08 01:30:04

Okay don't sweat it, I'm pretty sure all your drives are being detected based on what you posted.

edit: Misfit's method of using fdisk -l should be a faster way of accomplishing what I describe below using cfdisk.
But if automounting isn't working try manually mounting using the commands after the cfdisk stuff.

You need to figure out what's what, and you can use cfdisk for that.

run cfdisk on /dev/sda and /dev/sdb

cfdisk /dev/sda
cfdisk /dev/sdb

cfdisk is a partition editor like gparted. After the first command you'll see the partition table of the
usb drive that is showing up as /dev/sda. Now take a look at the partition types and sizes to figure
out what disk it is. Do the same thing for sdb.

Now as for the /mnt directory, YOU need to create a mount point for your usb drive.

For example to mount sda1, as root:

mkdir /mnt/usb
mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt/usb

Finally if you want to use automounting under gnome, you shouldn't need to use autofs.
Besides hal there's a daemon called gnome-volume-manager (I think that's what it's called) that you need to run.
If it's not running automounting won't happen, try starting it from the command line.

But I suggest mounting manually just to quickly access your data, it's not hard, just follow
the steps mentioned above.

Last edited by veek (2007-08-08 01:35:52)

jimmarch · 2007-08-08 02:08:36

Well before reading Veek's post I got further along. Almost there I think.

I went and loaded XFCE4 plus extras, and logged in with a XFCE session. I like having a backup desktop environment anyways in case Gnome gets squirrelly.

In XFCE Thunar shows the disks, but when I try and access 'em I get:

---
Failed to mount "128G Volume".

(exo-mount:4613): Gtk-WARNING **: Locale not supported by C library.
Using the fallback 'C' locale.
You are not privileged to mount the volume "128G Volume".
---

What I can't figure out is, what permissions? I'm added to groups "storage" and "disks"...any more needed?

The output from fdisk -l:

---
bash-3.2$ fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 9729 78148161 83 Linux

Disk /dev/sdb: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 19457 156288321 5 Extended
/dev/sdb5 1 3824 30716217 b W95 FAT32
/dev/sdb6 3825 19457 125572041 83 Linux
bash-3.2$
---

I'm going to jump back to Gnome and try Veek's concepts...

veek · 2007-08-08 02:16:20

Try doing ls -l on one of the nodes like /dev/sda and make sure it's owned by root and the storage group.

for what it's worth I'm part of these groups: wheel audio optical storage.

But the important one is storage because when I do:

ls -l /dev/sda1
brw-rw---- 1 root storage 8, 1 2007-08-07 22:10 /dev/sda1

you can see the node is part of the storage group. For me automounting works
fine under XFCE.

jimmarch · 2007-08-08 02:34:51

Yeah, I'm now a member of both disk and storage - some of them are "root and disk" some are "root and storage".

Still no worky.

Tried this at the command line:

---
[root@jimsacer jim]# gnome-volume-manager

(gnome-volume-manager:4708): Gtk-WARNING **: Locale not supported by C library.
Using the fallback 'C' locale.

(gnome-volume-manager:4708): Gdk-WARNING **: locale not supported by C library

(gnome-volume-manager:4708): GnomeUI-WARNING **: While connecting to session manager:
Authentication Rejected, reason : None of the authentication protocols specified are supported and host-based authentication failed.
[root@jimsacer jim]#
---

WTF, over?

I'm going to go try XFCE again...that came closer to working...

jimmarch · 2007-08-08 03:10:19

OK...I'm starting to get frustrated here.

I've added myself to the following groups:

---
[root@jimsacer jim]# usermod -G audio,disk,floppy,kmem,log,lp,optical,network,power,slocate,storage,tty,users,video,wheel,dbus,hal jim
[root@jimsacer jim]#
---

With that recipe, XFCE will start but it won't run Thunar. Seriously: if I try it at the command line the terminal window just comes to an end with no error. It *used* to run. I'm assuming it's some other group I'm not a member of.

Nowhere in the Wiki is there a list of groups I'm supposed to belong to. Can't find it searching the forums, either. I can see other people searching though! For the moment, just to get my data copied, I'm going to tweak GDM to allow a root login and see if that opens up Thunar in XFCE. If it does then it's a permissions problem for sure.

Look...in Ubuntu, the installer guides you through making your first user, and makes it functional. Now if you're going to make people do that by hand, cool, but we at least need to know how and none of the installation sections of the Wiki are covering. If I stick with this long enough I'll do it myself but...it's a pretty glaring oversight, if this is what's going on.

Sidenote: I tried to use usermod to make user "jim" root-equal:

usermod -G root jim

Went into Gnome that way, it told me I didn't have permissions to use audio!?

Sigh.

veek · 2007-08-08 03:19:26

It's too bad you're having so much trouble!

I've been attacking the problem the other way, and pretty much anything I do I can still automount!
I took myself out of the wheel group and that didn't cause any problems. I'm fairly sure the only
one you definitely need to be part of is the storage group. You may need to logout and log back in
for your group changes to become effective, not sure though.

Are you still using AutoFS? That could be causing a conflict. If it has a daemon, I recommend not using it
when trying to get automount working in XFCE and Gnome.

also did you install thunar-volman?

veek · 2007-08-08 03:21:55

jimmarch wrote:

[root@jimsacer jim]# usermod -G
usermod -G root jim
Went into Gnome that way, it told me I didn't have permissions to use audio!?
Sigh.

Just noticed this. usermod -G will take you out of any groups not listed.
You may already be aware of that, but I'm not sure if what you did will make your user user equivalent to root or not.

Check what groups you are currently in with the "groups" command.

also I use the following to add an user to a group:

gpasswd -a user group

Last edited by veek (2007-08-08 03:23:27)

jimmarch · 2007-08-08 03:26:53

Root access didn't help either.

In XFCE I still get a lockup when I try and run Thunar:

---
[root@jimsacer ~]# thunar

(thunar:4490): Gtk-WARNING **: Locale not supported by C library.
Using the fallback 'C' locale.

---

...and then it hangs there forever...WAIT, no, I installed "thunar-volman" in another window and everything came to life. HELL yeah!

OK. Now to logout, try coming back in as "jim" in XFCE. Wish me luck...

Odd thing though: below is what happened when I instaled thunar-volman. As you can see, it says it was already installed yet this one command definitely woke everything the hell up. Icons appear on the desktop, which flashed from black to blue (my first clue something happened while I was typing here in Firefox).

I installed "xfce4" (12.something meg) and "xfce-extra" (3.something). All sorts of stuff loaded, no errors, looked fine, yet clearly thunar-volman never loaded. ???

Oh well. I'm in the game now. Logging out...

jimmarch · 2007-08-08 03:29:44

Oh, yeah, I figured out too late that the usermod command works like that. So right now user "jim" is set up thus:

usermod -G audio,disk,floppy,kmem,log,lp,optical,network,power,slocate,storage,tty,users,video,wheel,dbus,hal jim

That's what I'll be trying when I climb back in as "jim" in a sec.

Are there any groups I'm missing, esp. for making Gnome work!?

Thanks,

Jim

jimmarch · 2007-08-08 03:39:39

Arg.

Now I'm logged in as me, but no thunar or disk icons again.

Anybody know what groups an XFCE user has to be in?

veek · 2007-08-08 03:41:37

I recommend being in the following groups

wheel, audio, optical, storage, jim

I'm in those groups (except jim) and I can play audio, watch video, access removal media, burn CDs / DVDs, etc.

Also thunar-volman doesn't get pulled in with the main xfce packages because I think it's
fairly new or experimental. It's in a package group called xfce4-goodies, but it's the only package
in that group.

veek · 2007-08-08 03:42:51

jimmarch wrote:

Arg.
Now I'm logged in as me, but no thunar or disk icons again.
Anybody know what groups an XFCE user has to be in?

When you're logged in as jim, try running groups on the command line.
Are you sure you're in the correct groups?

Also how are you starting xfce?

jimmarch · 2007-08-08 03:59:29

I'm starting XFCE from GDM, changing "Sessions".

Searching the forums, I noticed that there may be a problem with a screwed up .cache file. Sure enough, blew away the contents of the "sessions" directory and bingo, thunar pops up while I'm user "jim".

Great. Click on my bigger partition and I get:

---
Failed to mount "128G Volume".

(exo-mount:5041): Gtk-WARNING **: Locale not supported by C library.
Using the fallback 'C' locale.
You are not privileged to mount the volume "128G Volume".
---

When I run "groups" at the command line I get:

bash-3.2$ groups
tty disk lp kmem wheel log slocate dbus hal network video audio optical floppy storage power users jim
bash-3.2$

I've checked at /dev for the various "sda" and "sdb" series slots...all are owned by "root" some are also owned by "storage", others also by "disk". As you can see, I'm a member of "disk" and "storage".

W...T...F!?

I'm at my wits end here. I need my data. Any...god, any -=guesses=- welcome because this is getting insane.

jimmarch · 2007-08-08 04:00:35

doubletap, my bad...

Last edited by jimmarch (2007-08-08 04:01:04)

Arch Linux

#1 2007-08-07 21:17:03

USB disk access of every type is hosed - HELP!?

#2 2007-08-07 22:13:21

Re: USB disk access of every type is hosed - HELP!?

#3 2007-08-07 22:35:05

Re: USB disk access of every type is hosed - HELP!?

#4 2007-08-07 22:52:47

Re: USB disk access of every type is hosed - HELP!?

#5 2007-08-07 23:12:15

Re: USB disk access of every type is hosed - HELP!?

#6 2007-08-08 00:01:17

Re: USB disk access of every type is hosed - HELP!?

#7 2007-08-08 00:02:16

Re: USB disk access of every type is hosed - HELP!?

#8 2007-08-08 00:31:49

Re: USB disk access of every type is hosed - HELP!?

#9 2007-08-08 00:52:43

Re: USB disk access of every type is hosed - HELP!?

#10 2007-08-08 00:55:26

Re: USB disk access of every type is hosed - HELP!?

#11 2007-08-08 01:16:00

Re: USB disk access of every type is hosed - HELP!?

#12 2007-08-08 01:30:04

Re: USB disk access of every type is hosed - HELP!?

#13 2007-08-08 02:08:36

Re: USB disk access of every type is hosed - HELP!?

#14 2007-08-08 02:16:20

Re: USB disk access of every type is hosed - HELP!?

#15 2007-08-08 02:34:51

Re: USB disk access of every type is hosed - HELP!?

#16 2007-08-08 03:10:19

Re: USB disk access of every type is hosed - HELP!?

#17 2007-08-08 03:19:26

Re: USB disk access of every type is hosed - HELP!?

#18 2007-08-08 03:21:55

Re: USB disk access of every type is hosed - HELP!?

#19 2007-08-08 03:26:53

Re: USB disk access of every type is hosed - HELP!?

#20 2007-08-08 03:29:44

Re: USB disk access of every type is hosed - HELP!?

#21 2007-08-08 03:39:39

Re: USB disk access of every type is hosed - HELP!?

#22 2007-08-08 03:41:37

Re: USB disk access of every type is hosed - HELP!?

#23 2007-08-08 03:42:51

Re: USB disk access of every type is hosed - HELP!?

#24 2007-08-08 03:59:29

Re: USB disk access of every type is hosed - HELP!?

#25 2007-08-08 04:00:35

Re: USB disk access of every type is hosed - HELP!?

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