Issues with removable devices

Camus · 2011-10-28 17:58:36

I'm using i3 instead of a DE, so I have to configure a lot of things myself. One of the things that I cannot get working is removable devices. I'd like USB flash drives and CDs/DVDs to mount automatically (I'm using external optical drive via USB). devmon script detects CDs/DVDs successfully, but it usually doesn't mount them. Thunar doesn't show an optical disc at all, while PCManFM does, but sometimes disc isn't mounted.
At the moment I want to burn an ISO on a blank DVD. I've tried xfburn and graveman. None of these detect my optical drive, but I can point graveman to /dev/sr0. Still can't burn because it says there's no disc in the drive.

Here's error message when I try to mount optical disc in PCManFM:

Error mounting: mount: block device /dev/sr0 is write-protected, mounting read-only
mount: /dev/sr0: can't read superblock

What can I do? How do DEs handle this? Is there any way to reproduce DEs' behavior?

I'm already launching i3 with ck-launch-session dbus-launch. I've also added .pkla file regarding storage to polkit.

Shark · 2011-10-28 18:04:10

Do you have installed gvfs?

Camus · 2011-10-28 18:12:22

Is there no other way than installing gvfs (which has GNOME dependencies)? I'm hoping for a few packages and a magic configuration to save the day. Does gvfs mount external devices even when not in X or does X have to be running?

I'll install it anyway and will report back.

karol · 2011-10-28 18:12:43

You can't mount a blank disc because it doesn't have a filesystem, let the disc-burning app handle it.
I'm using cdrkit:

[karol@black ~]$ type cdr
cdr is a function
cdr () 
{ 
    cdrecord -v blank=fast -dao -eject dev=/dev/sr0 "$1"
}

No gvfs required.

I'm using a regular CD & DVD burners, not external usb ones.

Last edited by karol (2011-10-28 18:16:09)

Shark · 2011-10-28 18:17:49

Camus wrote:

Is there no other way than installing gvfs (which has GNOME dependencies)? I'm hoping for a few packages and a magic configuration to save the day. Does gvfs mount external devices even when not in X or does X have to be running?
I'll install it anyway and will report back.

Mounting with gvfs will be successful only in X, i think.

Another way of mounting when not in X could be with /etc/fstab file.Create device locations and mounting points.

Camus · 2011-10-28 19:19:31

gvfs shows everything nicely in thunar and PCManFM, along with other filesystems (which didn't work before either). But GUI burners still don't detect the blank disc.

@karol: Thanks, this works nicely for ISOs. It outputs this when trying the same thing on a directory:

Track 01: data  unknown length
wodim: Track 1 has unknown length.
wodim: Use tsize= option in SAO mode to specify track size.

Is this because it only works with ISOs? I didn't find any mention on the man pages of how to get tsize for a directory.

How would I set up fstab to mount automatically? I've tried to do this for a flash drive a few days ago, but if I remember correctly I still had to do "mount /mnt/path". And the flash drive didn't always have the same device path (/dev/sdb in my case).

karol · 2011-10-28 19:27:33

Camus wrote:

@karol: Thanks, this works nicely for ISOs. It outputs this when trying the same thing on a directory:
Track 01: data  unknown length
wodim: Track 1 has unknown length.
wodim: Use tsize= option in SAO mode to specify track size.
Is this because it only works with ISOs? I didn't find any mention on the man pages of how to get tsize for a directory.

Oh yes, these particular settings are perfect for isos but I simply haven't tried burning directories, I use pendrives instead.

Shark · 2011-10-29 08:22:00

How would I set up fstab to mount automatically? I've tried to do this for a flash drive a few days ago, but if I remember correctly I still had to do "mount /mnt/path". And the flash drive didn't always have the same device path (/dev/sdb in my case).

You could try without fstab but with udev https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ud … SB_devices

Or with fstab:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/US … with_Fstab

Camus · 2011-10-29 14:28:58

The fstab way isn't working nicely, since device path sometimes changes. I've added one of the udev rules and it works.

Thanks for the help

karol · 2011-10-30 03:13:41

Camus wrote:

The fstab way isn't working nicely, since device path sometimes changes.

If you're using e.g. '/dev/sda1' as the device path then yes, it will change. You need to https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pe … ming#Fstab or use udev, whichever you prefer.

Camus · 2011-10-30 07:55:27

That would work great if there was a persistent name for USB ports. Udev conflicts with gvfs (which I'll actually keep because of easy network browsing) and I can't mount manually with write permissions as normal user, even with options described on the wiki.

Pmount in combination with bashmount (from AUR) works great, it doesn't need X and it doesn't conflict with gvfs, so it doesn't matter if I mount a device outside of X, from bash or from file manager.
The only issue that I have now is that unmounting with gvfs also removes the device under /dev. Is it possible to configure gvfs not to do this? It's a microscopic annoyance and I can live with it.

Arch Linux

#1 2011-10-28 17:58:36

Issues with removable devices

#2 2011-10-28 18:04:10

Re: Issues with removable devices

#3 2011-10-28 18:12:22

Re: Issues with removable devices

#4 2011-10-28 18:12:43

Re: Issues with removable devices

#5 2011-10-28 18:17:49

Re: Issues with removable devices

#6 2011-10-28 19:19:31

Re: Issues with removable devices

#7 2011-10-28 19:27:33

Re: Issues with removable devices

#8 2011-10-29 08:22:00

Re: Issues with removable devices

#9 2011-10-29 14:28:58

Re: Issues with removable devices

#10 2011-10-30 03:13:41

Re: Issues with removable devices

#11 2011-10-30 07:55:27

Re: Issues with removable devices

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